


The Starling and The Stag

by DarkFairytale



Series: Mentor Tormentor [6]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Disfigurement, Hostage Situations, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, M/M, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Movie: The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Murder, Murder Husbands, Prison, See Notes for further warnings, Serial Killers, Silence of the Lambs References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-09-18 19:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 67,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9398924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkFairytale/pseuds/DarkFairytale
Summary: Clarice dreams of Will Graham with antlers. They sprout up from his curly hair and branch out towards the skies. Starlings start to gather and land on them, but some get stuck on the spiked ends, the way a shrike would impale its prey. Hannibal Lecter is also there, handsomely dressed in black, and he plucks the stuck Starlings down from their branches and eats them whole.“Did you catch any bad guys today, Clarice?”Clarice hears her father’s voice ask her.“No,”Clarice replies.“I am worried the bad guys are going to catch me instead.”When the hunt for the serial killer Buffalo Bill demands fast action, Agent Clarice Starling is given the task of understanding Bill's actions, motives and identity, by consulting with notorious serial killers Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, inmates of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.[Can be read as a standalone, or as a part of the Mentor Tormentor series].





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am back! For those that have followed my Mentor Tormentor post-S3 verse, this will be the last installment, and I thank for your patience and kind feedback so far. For those who have clicked on this to read as a standalone - welcome! And thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> This story, as you can probably tell from the summary, is my take on how the show could handle the Silence of the Lambs plot. Fans of the Silence of the Lambs movie will probably recognise certain scenes and pieces of dialogue in this, and that is because I have borrowed and/or adapted some of my favourite bits from the film to fit them in the Hannibal universe, because they are just too darn good to leave out.
> 
> I have read a couple of interviews where Bryan Fuller has discussed what he might like/have liked to do with the Silence of the Lambs plot. He mentioned some casting ideas of Lee Pace and Ellen Page for Buffalo Bill and Clarice Starling, but he also mentioned that he would like to explore a different racial background for Clarice, which would be awesome. So whilst I have imagined Lee Pace in the roll of Bill whilst writing this, I have left Clarice's character open to reader's interpretation.
> 
> Now, there is a major canon divergence from Silence of the Lambs in this story, because I have also read a number of articles that believe that Silence of the Lambs is transphobic. In order to avoid this, I have given Buffalo Bill different motives and aims in this story. I therefore hope that the content is acceptable, but if you think I need to add any further warning tags, just let me know.
> 
> Check out this amazing [**"The Starling and The Stag" Cover art**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11996826) by marlahanni!

_‘Bill Skins Fifth’_

The newspaper headline screams out at Clarice Starling from the evidence pin-board in Jack Crawford’s office. It’s surrounded by photographs of the five victims – three men and two women - in question; crime scene pictures that thankfully managed to avoid the press. It’s also surrounded by all sorts of clippings and photographs related to the case, but there are more questions on that board than answers. And it is that headline that screams out at her more than anything else.

_‘Bill Skins Fifth’_

Buffalo Bill. The only thing that the FBI knows is that the five killings are connected. But that is it. The second body had been deemed too similar in state to the first to be coincidental. The third had been confusing but undeniably related. By the fourth and fifth they had established that they had all been killed by the same man.

They know that they are hunting for a serial killer.

They just have absolutely no idea of where to start that hunt.

There is no evidence. No leads. They have nothing on Buffalo Bill but the nickname, which had been bestowed on him by the guys in Kansas City Homicide.

_‘Bill Skins Fifth’_

Five people that they had not been able to save.

Clarice is not even involved in the Buffalo Bill case, but she knows the frustrations of a prolonged investigation with next to no concrete evidence; she worked on the _Lecter and Graham Case_ after all. She knows the pressures that it puts on the agents and detectives involved. She knows the pressures that Jack Crawford is under, for the sakes of those five dead people, for the closure for their families.

Clarice does not know anything about the progress of the case but the very bare bones, and everything that she can see before her right there on the evidence board. Including that damn newspaper headline.

“Starling. Good morning.”

Clarice turns abruptly at the voice of her boss and mentor, Special Agent Jack Crawford, Agent-in-Charge of the Behavioural Sciences Unit. “Good morning, Sir.”

“Thank you for waiting,” Jack says as he crosses the room, places the stack of files in his hands on his desk, and smiles at her.

He has a brighter smile, these days. The last couple of years have been a period of recovery for him, and he has come back stronger, bolder, more alive and more determined. Clarice is glad to see it. Not long after the climax of the _Lecter and Graham Case,_ she had feared that he would take an early retirement, if only to save his health and state of mind. But Jack Crawford is the toughest man Clarice has ever met. And Jack Crawford does not give up easily. He takes risks, and that is what Clarice admires about him. She knows what some of those risks have cost Jack in the past – _w_ _ho_ those risks have cost him – and she has been warned about it by a couple of superstitious colleagues, but it has never deterred her. Jack did what he had to, to solve cases and save lives. Clarice could not find a single fault in him for that.

It was what her father had done too.

But Jack’s expression becomes serious as he sits down at his desk and gestures for Clarice to take the seat on the other side. “I have something that I need to discuss with you, Starling,” Jack says, “About a job. But it is not a desirable job. In fact I argued strongly against the decision. So I want you to know that you will be under absolutely no obligation to accept it if you do not think that…”

“Sir,” Clarice interrupts carefully, “What exactly is the job?”

Jack sighs. “It was decided a couple of months ago amongst the higher authorities that they wanted interviews to be conducted with all serial killers in custody for a psycho-behavioural profile. They believe that having such a compilation will be useful for unsolved and future cases. Most of the serial killers have been interviewed, and have cooperated relatively well, and I do admit that it has, actually, been enlightening, too. There are just a handful left to interview and a smaller handful that will not co-operate. I think you will be able to guess two of the killers who have been refusing to cooperate.”

“Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham?”

Jack Crawford nods, looking solemn and drawn all of sudden; his usual reaction to anything related to the _Lecter and Graham Case._ “Exactly. When the debate about the psycho-behavioural profiles first arose, I adamantly warned against interviewing certain individuals, who I deem too dangerous to interact with, or to encourage, and Hannibal was one of them. Will therefore fell into that category by association. I asked that Will be left alone, because of the delicate nature of his case, and if it was up to me, no-one at all would have to interact with Hannibal and risk the chance of him getting into their head. Unfortunately, Hannibal is the serial killer that my colleagues most want interviewing and profiling, and was the one that they had in mind when they dreamt this psycho-behavioural profile up in the first place. They have also gone against my wishes and would like Will interviewed as well. I have warned them that their mission is hopeless, foolish even, but they are insistent.”

“Who are they suggesting interviews the subjects?”

“Not me,” Jack says, “Before you ask. With my history with Hannibal and Will, it’s all too personal.”

Clarice knew that Jack had not been to see Lecter and Graham since the final day in court, which had seen Lecter and Graham sentenced to a lifetime in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

“But they want the person that interviews them to be somebody under my guidance,” Jack continues, “With my personal knowledge of the pair of them, my personal insight into their characters and mannerisms. I can then assist in constructing the questions that need to be asked, and the necessary procedures and precautions that need to be conducted with each of them.”

“The person that you have chosen to interview them, Sir,” Clarice says, “It’s me, isn’t it?”

Jack looks like he has just signed her death sentence. Clarice sees it as an honour. An honour that Jack would choose her from amongst her peers, to entrust her with such an important task. She feels exhilarated, because although she had been present on the night that Lecter and Graham were arrested, and had been involved in their case, and had tracked them all the way across Europe and back again, she had never spoken to either of them in person, and she had only been behind-the-scenes during the court case. She had never had a chance to question them, speak to them, know them. Not as Jack Crawford, Brian Zeller, Jimmy Price, and even the reporter Freddie Lounds, had.

“You have every right to decline if you wish,” Jack says again - makes it clear again -  “But with your intimate knowledge of the _Lecter and Graham Case_ and with your not having met either of them before, you make an ideal candidate for the job that needs doing. And most importantly, I trust you, and I trust your judgement. But if you do not want to be involved, I entirely understand.”

“No, Sir,” Clarice says quickly, lest Jack suddenly talk himself – and therefore her – out of it, “I will conduct the interviews. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.”

“Yes, well, ‘opportunity’, is quite a strong word,” Jack looks guilty. It sits heavy on his shoulders. Clarice thinks that maybe the guilty conscience in Jack Crawford’s head might just have the voice of Will Graham. “I do not feel like I am presenting you with much of an opportunity, but if you are determined, then I am glad that you accept, because I have every faith that you are the person most capable for this job and in achieving some form of result. I just want you to be sure that you want to be involved.”

“I want to be involved, Sir,” Clarice says. She really does want it. She wants to meet the men she helped hunt for so many years. She wants to prove herself in Jack’s eyes. “I know that you are concerned in making my existence known to them, but there is little that they can do from behind bullet-proof glass.”

Jack hums, doubtful and sombre, “Very well. I have decided that we should deal with Hannibal Lecter first, and the interview has been scheduled for tomorrow. I apologise that it is at such short notice, but my colleagues are eager that we press on. Depending on the success of the interview with Hannibal, a decision will then be made regarding Will,” Jack does not sound at all pleased about that last point. He takes a paper file from the top of the pile on his desk and flicks through it absently, “Now I don’t fully expect Hannibal to talk to you, either, seeing as he has been entirely un-cooperative with everyone else before you, but...” Jack falls silent, and looks at her like he is remembering something - or someone - else. “But I think he might talk to you. If he doesn’t then at least we can say that we tried and if Will won’t then speak to you either, then maybe we can leave it the hell alone. If Hannibal doesn’t cooperate, then all that is required of you is straight reporting. Make notes on how he looks, how the cell looks. Whether he is drawing or sketching, and if he is, what is he drawing?”

It must be strange for Jack, Clarice thinks, listing these generic observations, whilst knowing exactly how Hannibal used to look, what his home used to look like, what he used to draw, how he used to talk and joke and cook. Back when Hannibal had been Jack’s friend, Jack’s confidant.

Jack seems to be thinking the same, as he looks lost in the past again for a moment – something he used to do more frequently, but less so since Lecter and Graham’s arrest – before he pushes the paper file towards Clarice across the dark wood of the desk.

“You know the profile of Hannibal Lecter,” Jack says, “But I would like you to review it before the interview. There is a dossier on Lecter in this file, along with a copy of our questionnaire for the psycho-behavioural profiles, and an ID for you for the Baltimore Hospital. Please report back to me on the interview tomorrow as soon as you possibly can.”

“Of course, Sir,” Clarice promises, taking the file eagerly.

“Clarice, I want you to listen to me,” Jack says, and his voice is stern. At the use of her forename rather than her surname, Clarice knows this is serious. “I want you to be very, very careful with Hannibal Lecter. He is terribly charming, he is incredibly intelligent, but he is also a serial killer. He is also a cannibal. Just ask him the questions, make your observations, and do not deviate from any of the procedures that Dr Chilton and the Baltimore State Hospital staff go over with you. Tell him absolutely nothing personal. Believe me. You do not want Hannibal Lecter inside of your head. Just do the job, and leave. Never ever forget what he is. Because I was fooled, and I paid dearly for it,” Jack looks away, “We were all fooled, some longer than others, but we all paid dearly for it, in the end.”

“Sir,” Clarice asks, attempting to pull her boss back into the room, “I didn’t know Doctor Chilton still worked at the Baltimore State Hospital anymore. Not since the incidents…”

“He is still in charge,” Jack cuts in, “But his direct access to Hannibal and Will is closely monitored. You will get the pleasure of seeing Chilton for your induction to the Hospital procedures.”

Clarice has met Dr Frederick Chilton before. She knows that it certainly will not be a pleasure. Jack knows it won’t be either. It’s why he said it with sarcasm.

***

“He is an animal,” Frederick Chilton tells Clarice Starling, from where he sits behind his desk. “He is a monster. A pure psychopath. As far as I am concerned, it is a damn shame that Maryland doesn’t practice the death penalty. I pride myself on being a collector of psychopaths, and Hannibal Lecter was once my most prized asset. He was the topic of my book, if you will recall…”

Clarice has met Frederick Chilton nine times over the four and a half years that she has worked with the Behavioural Sciences unit, and has heard nine times, all about Chilton’s book about Hannibal Lecter, and about the villainy of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham and Francis Dolarhyde and Abel Gideon, and all the psychopaths like them that he collected in his hospital. He told her each time through a mouth, with a face, that had been reconstructed after a bullet fired by a Lecter-manipulated Miriam Lass, and reconstructed again after his meeting with the Tooth Fairy. In a body that had been put back together organ by organ, after Abel Gideon had taken him apart like a puzzle, and then saved as much as possible from the fire that had eaten away at his skin.

Frederick Chilton has every single reason to hate those men, to fear those men and men like them, to fear his job, after all that has happened to him. But Chilton’s hate and fear has not made him run away; they have warped into anger and vengeance and obsession. He is obsessed with the men that have done this to him.

“ _Hannibal the Cannibal; The Savoury Mind of Dr. Lecter_ ,” Clarice says, because despite Chilton still talking about that book at any opportunity even after everything that happened to him, Clarice has actually read it. She read it less than two years ago, just after they had caught Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham red-handed in that house in Baltimore. “Yes, I know it well, Dr. Chilton, it was…enlightening.”

This seems to be the right thing to have said, because Chilton nods, pleased with himself, his reconstructed lips stretching into a smug smile.

“I am pleased that you enjoyed it, Clarice,” Chilton says, and his voice sounds muffled and over-enunciated now, thanks to the damage done to his vocal chords and his mouth. “But those days are behind me.”

He says this with conviction, like he actually believes it.

“Hannibal Lecter is no longer my muse, my source of interest. He is my nemesis. And oh, does he think the same of me. But there is nothing he can do. We are never letting him out again. The monster is locked away in his cage, and he will never see the natural light of day again. You are lucky, Clarice, that I am a friend of yours, as otherwise you may have met with much resistance in wanting to interview him. Many people come to want to interview Hannibal Lecter. Not many are allowed past me.”

“I thank you for letting me see him,” Clarice says, not quite sure how only nine meetings had made her friends with this man, but grasping the opportunity presented to her.

“Not at all,” Chilton waves away her thanks with a scarred hand as though he has given her some huge privilege, “Besides, I think your meeting with Lecter will be an interesting one. I can see why Crawford is using you, of course,” He says conversationally.

“What do you mean?” Clarice asks.

“Well,” Chilton says, as though sharing some great secret with her, “I don’t know if you know this, or have ever been told this, but you remind me a lot of a young, spritely Will Graham. Not the Will Graham that now exists under lock and key, no, that man is a treacherous snake who knows exactly what he is doing. Did you know that Will Graham was the one that set me up for Francis Dolarhyde?”

Yes, Clarice knew that too. He has told her it almost as many times as he has told her about his book.

“Yes, I did know that.”

“I suppose you will be wanting to interview him too?”

“Not right away. Lecter’s interview has to be assessed first.”

“Hmm.”

“Dr. Chilton, why do you say I bear resemblance to Will Graham?”

Chilton regards her silently for a moment. “Not a physical resemblance, per say. But your character is not all that dissimilar to the Will Graham of old. I am not sure exactly why that is, but it is there. And my, does Dr. Lecter adore anything and everything about William Graham. He will like you. I am sure he will like you a lot.”

Clarice thinks Chilton does know what those similarities are, but he does not seem to be about to share them with her.

Instead he leans back in his chair, and his jaw shifts, and Clarice sees the mechanism that is holding up the collapsed side of his cheek move under his skin.

“You are a bright spark,” He says, “Crawford’s new favourite. That will be enough to gain Lecter’s interest in you from the start. Which is why you must remember the rules. You must follow the rules. And the rules are these; do not touch or approach the glass. You pass him nothing but soft paper. No pencils or pens. No staples or paperclips in his paper. Use the food-delivery drawer to pass the paper to him. If he attempts to pass you anything in return, do not accept it. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Dr. Chilton, Sir, I understand.”

“You were on the _Lecter and Graham Case_ for a long time, were you not?”

“I was, Sir. I joined the Behavioural Sciences unit six months before they fled the US for Europe.”

“Then you know what Hannibal Lecter can do to people. We insist on the precautions here, because it would not be beyond Hannibal Lecter to eat a face, or a tongue or a finger or two, just for the sake of pissing everybody off, or because he was bored. So follow the rules. I don’t want to have to be picking your organs up off the floor, I have already had to pick up my own after underestimating men like him.”

“Understood, Sir,” Clarice says again. And she does know. She has seen what Hannibal Lecter has done to people. She will follow the rules.

***

Clarice runs those rules through her head again and again, as the guard opens the barred gate to the wing that Hannibal Lecter resides in, in the deepest, darkest corner of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Because that is where the worst of them are locked away. She has seen the giant glass cell that Hannibal Lecter used to inhabit, but there are no big, white, beautiful cells for Dr Lecter now, oh no. There are no privileges allowed for Dr Lecter, not anymore.

She runs the rules through in her head as she passes three cells on her way to Dr Lecter’s cell, which is at the very end of the corridor, where the solitary chair that the guard has put out for her sits, lonely and facing the glass front of Lecter’s cell. She has to get past the other three cells first. She forces herself not to look into the first, even when she hears an eager “Hi darlin’,” emanate from it. There is dead silence as she passes the second, and when curiosity gets the better of her and she glances through the glass, she nearly jumps out of her skin when she sees the occupant of the second cell standing so close to the glass that he is a millimetre away from it, and he is staring at her, watching her in a terrifying and focused silence. She looks away again immediately, wishing she had not looked at all. The third cell is even worse than the second. The occupant throws himself at the glass and whispers filthy things at her, “I can smell your cunt,” he hisses, and Clarice forces herself not to look, as the manic cackle follows her.

And finally she is at Hannibal Lecter’s cell, and she doesn’t know whether to be relieved that she has made it there, or whether to expect Lecter to be the worst of the four men that occupied the corridor.

When she finally looks through the glass, Lecter is waiting for her. He stands at ease, his legs about a pace apart, his hands clasped behind his back, like he has been patiently awaiting her arrival. He is wearing a pristine white prison jumpsuit, and his hair is crisply neat, greying very slightly at the temples, Clarice notices. Otherwise, he does not look all that much older than the photographs she has seen of him from six years before, not long after his last stint in this very hospital. Maybe there are more lines around his eyes; lines of mirth and cunning. His cell is very minimal; a bed, a basin, a toilet, a table and chair; everything set into the floor and nothing that can be broken off and used as a weapon. The cell is spotless and tidy, but there are drawings stuck up on the walls, wonderful pencil drawings of extravagant buildings and beautiful people.

“Good morning,” Dr Lecter says to her. His voice is calm and smooth, with an accent that betrays his European heritage.

Clarice collects herself, and begins, “Dr Lecter. My name is Clarice Starling,” She says. “May I speak with you?”

Hannibal Lecter tilts his head fractionally to one side, and regards her with an assessing gaze. “You are one of Jack Crawford’s agents,” He says, “Aren’t you?”

“I am, yes,” Clarice confirms, quickly deciding that honesty is the best policy with this man. She has the distinct feeling that he will be able to tell if she is lying.

Hannibal Lecter’s gaze rakes over her once again. “Interesting,” He says, and he almost sounds amused. “May I see your credentials?”

Clarice complies, taking her ID out of her purse and holding it up in front of her, keeping a good distance away from the glass.

Hannibal Lecter moves, all of a sudden, stealthy, as he crosses the cell to stand before the glass, “Closer, please,” Lecter requests.

Clarice allows one step closer.

“Closer,” Lecter says again. He waits. “Please.”

Clarice steps forward again. There are now only two paces between her and the glass, and therefore, only two paces between her and the USA’s most notorious cannibalistic serial killer. Lecter’s eyes are dark – almost maroon at this close distance – and he studies the ID in Clarice’s hand. Then those maroon eyes flick up and look at her, and Clarice knows she should back away, but he has her trapped there, fixed to the spot.

“I recognise you,” He informs her, eyes tracking her face, “You were present on the night of the arrest of Will and myself, were you not?”

Again, Clarice decides that he will be able to tell if she lies. “Yes, I was there.”

She will never forget that night. The house had been bathed in blood, and so had the killers inside it. She remembers Hannibal Lecter turning into the gunpoint and glare of the flashlights with his bloodied hands up, and she remembers Will Graham’s wide, blood-stained smile.

Yes, she had been there.

“I thought as much,” Hannibal nods, and takes a small pace back, “I rarely forget a face.”

That is not something that Clarice wants to know. She knows Hannibal Lecter isn’t getting out of this cell for the rest of his days, yet even then, she feels like he has just issued a threat that she should be afraid of.

Lecter does not seem to be aware of Clarice’s concerns, and gestures to the seat behind her, “Please, Agent Starling, take a seat.”

“Thank you,” Clarice says before she sits, because she knows well that Hannibal Lecter approves of politeness and despises rudeness.

“Tell me,” Lecter says, once Clarice is sitting, “What did Miggs say to you? Miggs; the man in the next cell. I heard him hiss at you. What did he say?”

Clarice suppresses a shudder, “He said ‘I can smell your cunt’.”

“I see,” Lecter frowns, clearly displeased with the answer, “I abhor such grotesque vulgarity. Besides, that man has absolutely no sense of smell. I however,” He says, “I have a rather excellent sense of smell.” He steps towards the small holes in the glass that allows her to talk to him, closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “You use Evyan skin cream,” Lecter says, “And sometimes you were L’Air du Temps.” Lecter’s eyes open and he smiles at her. It is a disconcertingly amiable smile, which clashes with the uncomfortable nature of his action, “But not today,” He concludes.

“No, not today,” is all Clarice can think to respond.

“I must say that it is an excellent choice for you,” Lecter tells her, and he seems deadly serious, “The base note of sandalwood and the top note of jasmine.” Lecter sniffs again, and nods, “A good choice, but not a choice made by you, I feel.”

“I get bought it for Christmas,” Clarice says, and she doesn’t know why Lecter’s smile widens so much.

“And the puzzle is solved,” Lecter says softly, and the smile stays on his face, “This is the direct and honest back and forth that has been so missing from my usual visitors. The few agents that have preceded you have been so heavy-handed and dull, Freddie Lounds is as highly irritating as she ever was, and Frederick Chilton, well,” Lecter’s smile fades and his lip curls, “He is too sour now even for my tastes.”

Clarice tries not to react to the blatant cannibal pun.

Lecter does not seem to notice as he continues, “Tell me, Clarice Starling, as one of Jack Crawford’s favoured few…”

“I am not…” Clarice begins, but Lecter interrupts.

“Now, now, Clarice, what did I just say? You and I have been honest with each other so far, let us keep along the same vein. It is best that we cooperate with each other, is it not?” Lecter’s gaze and questions are weighted. He is testing her. He knows that she is here on the mission of making Lecter cooperate. He knows and he is using it to his advantage. But he is doing precisely what she needs him to do - to talk to her – and so she is going to let him get his way.

“I apologise, Dr Lecter,” Clarice says, “And for the interruption,” She adds, “That was rude of me.”

“It was,” Lecter agrees, his eyes moving over her face again with that analysing stare, “I would like you to tell me, Clarice,” he starts again, “Why Jack Crawford has sent you and not come to see me himself? I have been dearly hoping to speak to my old friend.”

_Because he has been better this last year with you and Will Graham in prison than he was during the entire time that you were on the run. Seeing you would ruin him all over him again. You would ruin him all over again_ Clarice thinks, but that is not what she says.

“His relationship with you is too personal. He thought that it would be more appropriate for an associate to come in his stead.”

“That does not explain why he has not been to visit once, since the trial,” Hannibal Lecter says, “But then, I should have expected as much. Maybe he has been to see Will. I would be none the wiser. Have you seen Will, Agent Starling?”

He says it casually, nonchalant, and if Clarice were being honest, she finds the remark clumsy. Lecter has carefully avoided asking after Will Graham so far, almost too carefully. Clarice has learnt all about Lecter’s obsession for Will Graham, and so the fact that Lecter has belatedly slipped Graham into conversation seems a little too rehearsed. She is not going to point that out to him. She needs him to take the questionnaire. She needs him to cooperate. But she also knows that Will Graham is the number one subject that should not be discussed with Hannibal Lecter. Luckily, she has nothing to keep from him in that regard. She does not have to lie.

“I have not seen him, Dr Lecter.”

“But you might yet.”

“I might,” Clarice allows.

Lecter cocks his head, regards her, again assessing whether she is telling him the truth. He purses his thin lips, face revealing no other emotion, though Clarice knows all too well that his mind is working all the while, taking everything she says and picking it apart piece by piece, seeing how he can work it to his advantage. He nods shortly.

Clarice knows what Will Graham looks like, and has not failed to notice that several of the drawings on Lecter’s cell walls are of Graham. There are other drawings too, however, of buildings and landscapes and places that Clarice has never been before. The detail in them is exquisite.

“Did you do all these drawings, Dr Lecter?”

Lecter smiles widely, teeth glinting, and he nods, gesturing with a flourish at the nearest drawing of a beautifully detailed building.

“Oh yes,” He says, “This is the Duomo seen from the Belvedere. Do you know Florence, Agent Starling?”

“I don’t, no.”

“Florence is a most spectacular place,” Lecter says, before looking at the other drawings on the walls, “Will was very fond of it, as I knew he would be,” He says, more to himself than Clarice.

“You went there during your time in Europe,” Clarice guesses, and Lecter nods with smirk. He knows how much and how long the authorities on both sides of the ocean chased the pair of them to no avail. “These drawings, Doctor, all that detail just from memory?”

“Memory, Agent Starling,” Lecter says wistfully, “Is what I have instead of a view,” His fingers trail over the corner of a pencil drawing of Will Graham with the big black wings of a bat, or a dragon, “And what I have instead of the company of those that I have been parted from.”

Clarice does not know what to say. Lecter is speaking as though Graham has been dragged unlawfully from his hands, that he has been unrightfully parted from him. He speaks as though he is not a serial murderer, separated from his accomplice. It is not just that, though, Clarice knows. Will Graham is not just friend or accomplice to Hannibal Lecter, no, he is a lover, too. Clarice would not have had to have heard about the matching wedding rings in the reports on Lecter and Graham’s arrests to know the truth of it; she can see it here, in the clear love and devotion that Lecter has poured into his pencil-depictions of Will Graham.

She sees drawn versions of Will Graham as a dragon; Will Graham with antlers sprouting from the top of his head; Will Graham with almost wolf-like qualities, crouched down with two dogs that Clarice knows from photographs actually belonged to Lecter and Graham; Will Graham in the midst of a classical-looking portrait that Clarice assumes is based on a real famous painting that she will never have heard of; and a simple, beautiful one of Will Graham wearing a suit and sitting at a piano. There are other people in Lecter’s drawings as well, she even sees one of Jack Crawford, but Will Graham features most heavily.

“Will Graham takes many forms,” Lecter says fondly, clearly picking up on her momentary distraction, “And I draw him as such. He is a most versatile subject,” Lecter smiles at her, “Men can assume many a persona; deer, dragons, buffalo…”

Clarice blinks at the last one, and when she looks back to Lecter, he is watching her, his eyes shining with a hidden smirk.

“Buffalo,” Clarice repeats, allowing herself to take the bait of the line that was clearly cast for her.

“Oh yes,” Lecter says, “I have heard of the new one. Buffalo Bill; Jack Crawford’s new bane, his new mission. Would you be able to tell me why Buffalo Bill is called ‘Buffalo Bill’, Agent Starling? The newspapers will not say, and I doubt it is because he is actually portraying any animalistic quality.”

Clarice pauses, unsure on how much information she should be sharing with the inmate.

“If you can answer me that question, Agent Starling, I will quite happily answer all the questions on that little sheet of paper that you have brought to me.”

Clarice needs Hannibal Lecter to cooperate. Jack Crawford told her not to give away information about herself, and to get the answers they needed so that Lecter could then once again be left alone. She supposes that giving Lecter the origin of the nickname, which is something of public knowledge in the outside world, will not harm the cause.

“The name ‘Buffalo Bill’ started as bad joke in Kansas City Homicide,” She tells him, “They said ‘This one likes to skin his humps.’”

Lecter clasps his hands behind his back, “Ah,” He says, nodding, “And why do you think he removes their skins, Agent Starling?” He is watching her closely again.

He would like her opinion. She does not work the case, so she is still not giving away any confidential information on the _Buffalo Bill Case_ nor giving away any personal information. So, she tells him her theory.

“It excites him,” She says, “Most serial killers keep some sort of trophies from their victims.”

“I didn’t,” Lecter says.

“No,” Clarice replies bluntly, “You ate yours.”

Lecter grins at her again, showing his teeth, his pointed incisors. “So I did,” He says, as though he had forgotten. “You can send that piece of paper through, now.”

Clarice haltingly moves towards the side of Lecter’s cell, where the sliding food carrier sits in the glass. She eyes Lecter, to make sure that he hasn’t moved, pulls the metal drawer out towards her, slides in the paper, triple-checking the absence of staples and paperclips and then moves backward.

Lecter waits until she is back at her chair, before almost-smugly sauntering towards the draw, and picking the paper up out of the drawer with a flourish. He peruses it for all of ten seconds, before a brow raises and he looks up at her incredulously.

“Really, Agent Starling? You think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool?”

“It is not my tool,” Starling tells him, before she can stop herself.

“Ah.” Lecter smiles knowingly and sets the paper down on the table behind him. “Then, you will not mind if we use a more…sharp tool?”

Clarice is hesitant, “And what tool is that, Dr Lecter?”

“I think that you have a lot of ambition, Clarice Starling,” Lecter says, “You must, to want to come and see me.”

Clarice does not say anything. It is getting too personal.

“I think you must have ambition,” Lecter continues, “You must be young; still in your twenties. And yet it is you that has been sent to me by Jack Crawford, which means that you must be his new favourite. Well, not exactly new. From your earlier comment about my travels in Europe, and with your being sent to see me, I would assume that you have been asking questions about me for far longer than just today. You have been one of the ones chasing me, haven’t you? And keeping tabs on the progress of the Italians and the Hungarians and the Belgians and the Lithuanians who also chased us too? That means that you will have been working closely with Jack Crawford, hence the favouritism. He has been able to vent to you, use your mind to put a perspective on a case that his own Will-Graham-blindness refused to see. You think I haven’t noticed that you are exactly the type of person that Jack likes to take under his wing?”

Again, Clarice does not respond. She does not want to supply Lecter with further fuel. Further ammunition. She will not rise to this bait.

“And you like being under his wing, because you have that ambition. You must have been told about Crawford’s previous favourites, his Miriam Lass and his Will Graham, but you have ignored the warnings, because your ambition means more to you than your sense of self-preservation. ” Lecter surmises, a little too perceptively. “You have the determination of someone with something to prove,” Lecter cocks his head, “Following in somebody’s footsteps, maybe?”

Clarice does not know what she does. She doesn’t think she flinches, or even blinks, but something about her must have answered Lecter’s question, because he narrows down his question.

“Parent?” Lecter guesses.

Again, Clarice swears she does nothing telling, but Lecter seems to know anyway.

“Father,” he chooses, and chooses correctly. “That makes sense. Jack Crawford reminds you of your father, perhaps…”

“Dr Lecter,” Clarice finally snaps, interrupting. She does not care if he perceives it as rude.

Instead of being offended, Lecter smiles, amiable and faux-innocent. “You see how easy it is to dissect someone, Agent Starling?” He asks, “Do you see how easily I dissected you? Well, maybe instead of patronising me with your preschool questionnaire, you can do me the courtesy of learning to dissect me in the same way. You seem perceptive to me. Switched on. Not empathetic like Will, but perceptive. You have a more calculating mind than an emotional one.”

“Dr Lecter, this is an FBI-approved questionnaire,” Clarice states, defensively, hotly. “Maybe you can turn your own ‘superior’ perception to yourself, dissect yourself, and write down what you find. Maybe you can take a trophy to eat.”

Clarice stops herself, and she is stunned at what she has just said to one of the world’s most infamous serial killers. She can imagine Lecter flying into a rage, she can imagine Lecter shutting down, she can imagine Lecter issuing threats, but then, she does not know Lecter in person. She only knows him in theory, so she is wholly unprepared for him to chuckle triumphantly.

“A census taker once tried to test me,” He tells her darkly, moving back towards the tray, and delivering her empty questionnaire back to her, “I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”

Clarice stares at him, wonders if that is true, swallows, and waits.

“I will not take the FBI’s preschool questionnaire,” He says again, “You say that it is not your tool, Starling. So use your own tools. Use that mind of yours. And with that I offer you an exchange.”

“What exchange is that?” Clarice asks, because although she is wary of what Lecter is about to offer, she refuses to return to Jack Crawford and her other superiors empty handed.

“I would like to give you a clue,” Lecter says, “To give you a chance, to help you in your advancement. You must get that mind of yours working, Starling, and not let it be boxed in by the narrow-minded people around you. A Starling needs to spread its wings. But it must give me something in return.”

“What do you want in return?”

“Two things,” He says immediately, “Firstly, I would like you to look into the whereabouts of our dogs.”

He says ‘our’, and he is referring to himself and Will Graham, as a couple.

He carries on smoothly, not noticing or not caring about his phrasing, “The dogs, Samson and Beverly, or ‘Sam’ and ‘Bev’ as Will calls them, were assumedly picked up after our arrest. If you do go to see Will – and do not even try to give him your questionnaire, he will only scoff at it – he will inevitably ask after those creatures. Quite possibly he will ask about their welfare before mine, and not just because he knows where I am. Secondly, I would like Jack Crawford to supply better protection for Will. Frederick Chilton may not be allowed near him, but that did not stop a sly word and a handful of dollar bills to the guards to do his dirty work for him. Will was beaten and although I did not see it, I heard about it. It is unacceptable for a man in Chilton’s position to so unlawfully treat his inmates,” Lecter says, like he and Will are not two of the reasons that Chilton is the way that he is, “His personal vendettas make him an unsuitable host. Eventually, Crawford must consider either transferring Chilton, or moving Will and I elsewhere. But, for now, Crawford’s word to protect Will will be satisfactory. Those are my two conditions.”

“I cannot make any promises,” Clarice decides, because those two conditions are not taxing, not prying, and under no obligation to be fulfilled, “But I will certainly look into both for you.”

“I will hold you to that, Agent Starling,” Lecter says, and he is deadly serious. Deadly being the operative word. “I hope that you will not disappoint me. And now, true to my word; a clue for you.”

Clarice semi-consciously takes an eager step forward.

“Look deep within yourself, Clarice Starling. Go and seek out Miss Mofet, an old patient of mine. M-o-f-e-t,” He spells out, “And you will find answers.”

Clarice is bewildered. That was it? That was his ‘clue’?

“Answers to what?”

“Something you might, or might not, expect,” He says. “And now you must fly back to the FBI. Do be careful not to look at Miggs on the way out, and do not listen to the things that he says, it is all discourtesy, and that is unspeakably ugly in every way. Now fly away home fast, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly.”

Starling does not wait around. She decides that that one clue is enough, and Hannibal Lecter will not give her any more besides. He is done talking to her. She strides to the tray, snatches out the empty questionnaire, and marches purposefully back down the corridor and towards the exit, the escape.

She does not look at Miggs, who spits vulgar things at her all the way, and she knows that Lecter will be listening to him, even as she tries not to. She does not look into the cell of the silent staring man, nor the man in the first cell, that calls after her and begs her to stay in his cell with him, as she flees, as fast as her falsely-unaffected walk will allow her.

***

She tells Jack Crawford about her meeting with Hannibal Lecter. She misses out some parts, such as Hannibal Lecter’s shrewd look into her soul, but she does tell him about Lecter’s offer of an exchange.

“The name Miss Mofet means nothing to me,” Jack Crawford says, absently rubbing at his mouth with his hand as he ponders, “But it is possibe that she was a patient of Hannibal’s long before I met him. The name could equally be a pseudonym, or an anagram, a puzzle of some kind. Hannibal does love his games. It is worth looking into, however. Certainly. Hannibal would not give us information for no reason, and if it was in order to do something for Will, then I can believe it to be genuine.”

“He really cares so much for Mr Graham?”

“He does,” Jack Crawford sighs, “His fascination and devotion to Will have been the problem from the very beginning.”

“Would we be able to find out about the location of the dogs? Or provide further protection for Mr Graham?”

“The dogs, certainly. If you are still going to speak to Will, then it is best that you go ready with that information, because I doubt he would fully cooperate without it. Will has always loved dogs more than people.”

“More than Hannibal Lecter?”

“At one time,” Jack agreed, “Now, I am not so sure.” Jack sits back in his chair and his pen etches back and forth over the edge of the notes he has made during her report, “Leave this with me, Starling. But well done today. You have achieved what many others before you failed to do.”

Clarice would have considered that a compliment, if they both did not know that actually, all Clarice had had to do to get Hannibal Lecter to cooperate was to attract his attention.

“We will sleep on it,” Jack suggests, and he looks sombre as he says, “There is a high chance that we will ask you to speak to Will as well, based on your success with Hannibal today. Are you prepared for that?”

She cannot deny that speaking to Hannibal Lecter had been a thrill as much as it had been unnerving. She cannot deny that she is also eager to speak to Will Graham, a man that has captured the fascination of both Hannibal Lecter, and if she were being honest, herself as well.

“I am prepared for that.”

“Then you are dismissed, Starling, thank you.”

“Thank you Sir,” Clarice stands, and as she opens the door to leave Jack Crawford’s office, she glances back at him, and sees him sitting at his desk, looking for all the world that he is sitting somewhere else, years ago; discussing a case with Miriam Lass or Beverly Katz, maybe, or sitting in a car with Will Graham, or sitting at Hannibal Lecter’s dining table.

***

_“Daddy!” Clarice runs towards her father across the grass in front of the house, barefoot and aged nine years old. Her West Virginian-accent stronger, her heart lighter, happy._

_Her father turns away from his police car, which he has just pulled up on the drive. “Clarice,” He smiles at her._

_She leaps up into his arms, and knows he will catch her. He is strong, he is brave, he is her hero._

_“Did you catch any bad guys today, Daddy?” She asks him, hands clutching into his uniform jacket, and knows she will have one of her very own one day. She wants to be just like her Daddy when she grows up._

_He laughs, sets her back down on the grass, and ruffles her hair, “Not today, angel,” He tells her._

_Not today._

_The scene dissolves, transforms and twists into something else._

_She is in a house in Baltimore. She is grown. She is an FBI Agent, just like she promised her Daddy that she would be. There is a gun in her hand._

_The team stalk into the house in silence, in unison. They had received an anonymous tip-off that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham had returned to Hannibal Lecter’s old home. She had scoffed to herself. She had studied Lecter and Graham for years, and they would never do something so foolhardy. Surely not?_

_They enter the house and there is blood on the walls. There is blood everywhere. And in the midst of it all stand two men. There are two dismembered bodies at their feet._

_“Freeze!” Jack Crawford shouts._

_Hannibal Lecter’s hands rise into the air, he straightens, and spins neatly. He looks surprised, caught-out, exasperated. There is blood on his face. Will Graham turns and his eyes look momentarily wild and feral, but then his hands slowly replicate Lecter’s and he smiles at them, and there is blood in his teeth._

_Both of them are recognisable. Their faces are distinctive and have not changed all that much since their mug-shots years before. Hannibal Lecter’s chiselled and striking face, and Will Graham’s boyishly-attractive one. Apart from looking half-a-decade older, the only major difference she sees is that they both have their heads shaved of hair.  She assumes that it is so they would not be so easily identified in whichever method they used to get back onto the continent and back into the State. In the glow of the flashlights on their faces, they look like skulls, sunken in all the right – or wrong – places. With their shaven heads, caught red-handed, they look like thugs. They look like criminals._

_And criminals they may be. But mindless thugs they are not._

_Two pairs of intelligent eyes survey the scene before them, taking in each face._

_“Hello Jack,” Hannibal Lecter says. He smiles, and there is blood in his teeth, too._

_“Did you catch any bad guys today, Clarice?” Clarice imagines her father’s voice asking her later that night, when Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are taken into custody._

_“I did today, angel,” Clarice replies._

Clarice wakes in a cold sweat, staring up at the ceiling; the skull-like shadows on the faces of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham swimming before her eyes long after the memory of her father’s face fades away.

***

“Clarice,” Jack Crawford says to her the next day. He called her to his office, first thing. She wonders what the emergency is. “Chilton rang and asked me to tell you that Miggs is dead,” Jack tells her.

Oh.

“Miggs,” Clarice repeats, stunned and internally shuddering at the memory of the man that had hissed at her from his cell the day before, “Dead? How? I only saw him yesterday…”

“Apparently Hannibal started whispering to him yesterday afternoon. Miggs was crying at lights-out. This morning they found him. He’d swallowed his own tongue.”

Clarice blanches. Does Hannibal Lecter really have such a mastery of words and the human psyche to _talk_ a man to his death?

Apparently he might.

“Starling?”

“Sorry Sir, I just…Miggs said some vulgar things to me as I passed his cell yesterday. Lecter seemed more offended by it than I was.”

“He always hated rudeness.”

“So it was because of me that he did that to Miggs?”

“No, Starling,” Jack leant forward in his chair, “Hannibal does this kind of thing just to amuse himself. He likes to see how he can control and manipulate people. He may have done it to gain your attention, our attention. He could have done it to unnerve you, to make you feel guilty. It is not your fault.”

Clarice takes a breath, tries to push down the guilt that is twisting her belly anyway, and nods.

“There is something else, as well,” Jack leans back in his chair, tugs at his shirt collar uncomfortably, and it has only been a matter of days since Lecter had stormed back into his life, but already he looks tired and worn again. “Firstly, I have decided that the ‘Miss Mofet’ lead is worth chasing. Somehow I don’t think this is one of Hannibal’s red herrings, it is too obscure, and I think Hannibal is starting a game with us, and I think we have to let him move his pieces. I would look into it but with the _Buffalo Bill Case_ …”

“I will look into it, Sir,” Clarice offered immediately. She had been up most of the night thinking about ‘Miss Mofet’ and pulling apart her conversation with Lecter. “I can start this afternoon.”

“If you are sure that you want to take it, I will not stop you. But Starling, again, I warn you, approach this with caution, and keep me updated with anything and everything you find.”

She knows why Jack is so concerned for her. She is the third in a line of Crawford-favoured Agents who have encountered Hannibal Lecter. Miriam Lass; kidnapped, held hostage, brainwashed, broken down, her arm severed. William Graham; manipulated, framed, carved into and sawn open, and eventually stolen away and transformed.  Jack is worried that Lecter will do the same to her. He wants to be involved at every step, because he is afraid that Lecter will make the ‘curse of Crawford’ a hat-trick.

“Of course, Sir. Anything I find, you will be the first to know.”

“Thank you,” Jack says.

“I can start looking into the…”

“Starling,” Jack interrupts, “Before you start investigating Mofet, there is something else. My colleagues were pleased with the results from your interview with Lecter. They…” He pauses, takes a moment. Taps his pen on the table. Then he looks at her, his voice is heavy, as it always is when he talks about _him_ ; “They would like you to interview Will Graham. Chilton has allotted you a time with him this afternoon.”

Clarice feels her stomach flip. She has been intrigued by Will Graham ever since he and Hannibal Lecter brought down the Tooth Fairy in a bloody battle to the death, and on reading his history, on watching recordings of some of his lectures at the Academy, and having been one of the Agents following the case as it left the US and swept across Europe, she knows she wants to meet him. She has to meet him. She has never known so much about a person she has never met. She has never been more involved with a case, with a person of interest, as this.

Clarice nods, “I won’t let you down, Sir.”

“The same rules apply to Will as they did with Hannibal. Starling, tread carefully, please.”

He is asking for her sake, she knows. But he is also asking for the sake of an old friend. A friend that Jack Crawford felt he had let down, in so many ways, and then lost for good.

And Clarice knows that despite everything, a part of Jack Crawford still hopes that the old Will Graham can be found. That there is something there worth saving.

***

Clarice looks at the man before her, and tries to see the man that could be saved. She tries to see the man that saved lives himself, that worked for the FBI just like she does, the man that lived a reclusive life in a solitary house in Wolf Trap with his adopted pet dogs.

Will Graham stares back at her, and he cocks his head to the side in a motion that rather mimics one of those pet dogs. Clarice isn’t sure what this man is.

Will Graham is housed in an entirely different wing of the State Hospital to Hannibal Lecter. It is a little less high-security, but he is still behind glass, and his cell is equally sparse. His cell isn’t as tidy as Lecter’s is, and there aren’t drawings on the walls.

The last time she had seen Will Graham his head had been completely shaved of hair. Now, over a year later, it is a mess of long tendrils, and is longer and wilder than any haircut she has seen in any photograph of Graham, before and after meeting Hannibal Lecter. It almost hides his eyes, and covers his ears. His facial hair is longer too. He has the white line of a scar running down one cheek, which had not been in any pre-Tooth Fairy-escape photographs. He looks feral in appearance, but that crazed look from the night of the arrest is not there. He is wearing the orange jumpsuit worn by prisoners in this wing of the State Hospital, bright and bold, in comparison to the crisp white of Lecter’s wing. Although his jumpsuit is brighter, he does not look as vibrant as Hannibal Lecter does. He looks unkempt and a little malnourished, and instead of looking threatening, he looks small in the cell. By all physical accounts, he looks almost harmless. But he is not harmless.

“You are an Agent,” Graham says to her, “One of Jack’s.”

She does not know how he knows. She does not even bother asking.

“Yes, Mr Graham, my name is Agent Clarice Starling.”

“Starling,” Graham repeats slowly. His voice is not quite how she imagined it would be; it is a little lower, a little rougher, but no less unpleasant than she imagined. “You were on the team that chased us, weren’t you? You have been chasing me for a long time.”

Again, Clarice decides that it is best not to ask how he knows. It is clearly what he wants her to do.

Graham shuffles his feet, but does not move closer to the glass.

“Don’t you want to know how I know that?” Graham asks her, and his eyes are darting over her face, never settling on her eyes.

Clarice had read the notes made during the court hearing that had seen Will Graham locked up in the Baltimore State Hospital the first time around, and she remembers what was said about the man before her.

_The accused has a remarkable visual memory. The accused is keenly insightful to the human condition. The accused is arguably the smartest person in the room._

She does not need to see, or speak further, to Will Graham to know that all those points made were the truth.

“I know, because you have not asked me,” Graham clarifies for her, semi-helpfully, “Which means that you knew that I would see those things about you.”

“Mr Graham…”

“I would,” Graham interrupts, eyes catching hers and moving on, “I would like to know if you know some other things about me, too.”

“And what things would those be, Mr Graham?”

“Do you know how Hannibal is?” Graham asks, “And do you know where our dogs are?”

Clarice thinks, automatically, that Hannibal Lecter would be thrilled to learn that Will Graham asked after him before the dogs. It was uttered on the same breath, but Hannibal came first. And from all that Jack has told Clarice of Will Graham, and of all that she has read, she knows how much Graham loves his dogs. And from that she knows just how much Lecter has come to mean to the man before her.

“Mr Graham, that sort of information is not something that I can disclose to you without…”

“You are here for a reason,” Graham interrupts her again, his expression momentarily hardening. “You chased me for a long time, Starling, and then you caught me, but you have not come to visit me in the trap until now. Which means that whatever you are here for must be important, and it means that you must want something from me. This is what Jack does. He only turns to me when he wants something from me.” Graham is fidgeting nervously, his eyes fixed somewhere on the left side of Clarice’s face, “So I will not cooperate until you tell me those things.” He sounds determined, but his conditions are spoken with a slight desperation, like he thinks he she might still say no, even though he has hit the nail on the head. He does not sound like a serial killer, he does not sound like Hannibal Lecter; confident and self-assured. But she knows what he is, she just does not know if this is an act or not.

“May I clarify, Mr Graham? If I tell you how your dogs and Hannibal Lecter fare, you will cooperate?”

Will Graham nods, almost eagerly. “Yes.”

She has been given permission by Jack, and instructions as to how much information she can divulge to Graham.

“Your dogs, Samson and Beverly, are being cared for by an ex-colleague of yours.”

“Which one?” Graham asks immediately.

“I cannot share that information with you, Mr Graham. Just be assured that they are in good hands.”

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” Graham says, and his voice is hardening a little now, too. “You could at least tell me.”

“I am under no obligation to do that, Mr Graham.”

Graham’s gaze finally fixes on hers, and stays there for a moment, “And Hannibal?”

“I have been told he is in good health.”

“You have been told?” Graham repeats with a hint of amusement, and his lips quirk into a forced, twisted smile. “You are lying to me,” He says, and he sounds just like Hannibal Lecter when he says it. “You have seen him with your very eyes. You saw him before you came to me.”

“Yes,” Clarice admits, knowing that it was foolish of her to even try to deceive him. “Yes, I have seen him. He cooperated with us, and he was in good health.”

“Did he ask after me?” Graham asks, and he suddenly sounds small again, hopeful.

“Yes.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I had not seen you yet.”

Graham nods, a little sadly. “When you see him again, do not fabricate a lie for the state my condition, will you? He will tell if you’re lying, anyway.”

Clarice cannot help but frown, latching onto the suggestion in spite of herself, “Are you not being treated well, Mr Graham?”

Will Graham shrugs. “Dr Chilton does not like me. You worked on my case, Starling, I am sure you have met Chilton at some point along the way. He blames me for setting him up for the Great Red Dragon.” He reaches up and tugs his long hair, “He is leaving me to deteriorate.”

Clarice looks Will Graham over once again, and wonders whether that might be indeed the truth. If it is, then it is her duty to investigate the mistreatment of an internee.

“I will look into it for you, Mr Graham.”

Graham’s small smile this time is a little more genuine. “I would appreciate it.”

“Mr Graham,” Clarice pulls the questionnaire from the file in her hand. Despite Hannibal Lecter warning her that Will Graham would only scoff at the ‘preschool questionnaire’, she has been asked to use it regardless. She thinks Graham might cooperate.

“Would you answer these questions?” She asks, carefully, nearly gently, and shocks herself with the realisation that she is actually feeling sympathy for the killer.

Graham, apparently oblivious to Clarice’s moment of crisis, is alert again, “Jack sent these questions?”

“His associates, mainly.”

“That makes sense. Jack did not want to involve me in whatever game they are playing, I suppose.”

“A game, Mr Graham?”

“Of course,” Graham says, shrugging his drooped shoulders, “There is always a game involved. Or a case. Jack normally resorts to me if there is particularly tricky case that he can’t solve, and he needs my insight; the insight of a man who can get into the mind of murderers.” Graham shifts again, “Though because I am not just within the mind of murderers now, he does not really want to involve me, but he has no choice. Which begs the question, what killer is it that they are unable to find? Unable to pin down? Do you know who it might be, Agent Starling?”

Clarice knows immediately who it will be, if what Graham is saying is the truth. Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill is the most wanted killer in the USA right now. He is the one they cannot catch. But surely they would not want the advice of Will Graham or Hannibal Lecter; both serial killers, and at least one of them a cannibal.

That thought makes her wonder if Will Graham is a converted cannibal, and she suppresses a shudder.

“You do know,” Graham says, “But you will not tell me.”

Clarice realises that Graham may not know about Buffalo Bill. He has not expressly mentioned the killer as Lecter did. Maybe, if Graham has really been mistreated, he has not had access to newspapers as Lecter apparently has.

“No, I cannot give away any information about current cases.”

Graham shrugs again, “You can send the paper through if you like, but it would be better if you read the questions for me. I am not allowed my glasses, so I probably won’t be able to read them.”

Another unwelcome surge of pity courses through her. Can Will Graham really have been degraded and deprived of even basic human luxuries? Or is he just trying to win her sympathy or support? It makes her doubt Frederick Chilton, but it also makes her question the lying capabilities of Will Graham, because one of them – Chilton or Graham - will have to be in the wrong. And if Chilton _is_ the one in the wrong, he is going to be in serious trouble for disregarding an inmate’s human rights.

She reads him the questions. Or rather, she reads him a couple. He scoffs at the first one, just as Hannibal Lecter said he would, but he answers, whereas Lecter had refused to. He answers the next three, meekly and without much detail. He seems distracted.

At the fifth, she finds out why. He fixes her with a look. He completely ignores the question. He cocks his head to one side.

“Do you pity me, Clarice Starling?” he asks.

Clarice is startled, but attempts not to show it. She shakes her head. “No. I do not pity you.”

“You are lying,” He says quietly. “You see me as the lost boy that Jack Crawford failed to save; the lost boy that was taken by the cruel claws of the villainous Hannibal Lecter. You did not know me then, but you have read about my life in the pages of a case file like a storybook, and have gotten yourself attached to the delicate, misunderstood main character, and you think I can be redeemed, because this was not what I truly wanted. You also think that there are bits and pieces of me that are a little like you, and that concerns you, and you want to ensure that the same things that have happened to me do not happen to you.”

It’s a little too perceptive for Clarice’s liking. She _had_ followed Will Graham’s story whilst working on the case as though he was some fictional being; a legendary figure in a cautionary tale told throughout the FBI both by those who knew him well, and those who had never met him. Will Graham was an enigma, a problem that needed solving. She had tried to fit the pieces together, and was trying to now in person, and finding herself floundering in the face of a man who plucked the pieces of her persona and puzzled them together almost effortlessly with the use of a superior empathy. A superior empathy that had aided him and betrayed him in equal measure. 

“Tell me, Agent Starling,” Will Graham asks her, just as quietly, “Am I living up to your expectations?”

He is as intelligent as she thought he would be. She feels more fearful in his presence than she thought she would. She feels more sympathy for him than she thought she would. How did she ever think that she would be able to conduct this interview impartially? 

Graham continues, despite the fact that Clarice has not given him an answer. She supposes that that is answer enough for him; “So, after meeting the tragic hero of your storybook, trapped in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, tell me something else. Do you think I am a criminal, Starling?”

She looks at him, and he stares right back. The sudden stillness and intense stare is very different to the twitchy awkwardness he had displayed only moments ago.

“And more importantly,” He says, and he smiles that twisted smile again, “Do you think me insane?”

In the face of the suggestion, Clarice finds her voice, and it is defensive. “You are killer, you cannot deny that.”

“That does not answer my questions,” Graham says. “But I can see that I have unnerved you. That was unintentional.” He twitches again and the intensity fades. “I have been alone for a long time, Starling, so when faced with someone new my empathy,” He flutters his hands, “Goes into overdrive.” And then, in the blink of an eye, he is focused again and is watching her with the unnerving concentration of a predator on prey, “But you have read my story, you see. You knew things about me, when I did not know anything about you, which hardly seemed fair. So my empathy actually assisted me there. I know more about you now from these few minutes than you would scarcely believe. It’s the ability of mine that Jack utilised.”

Will Graham approaches the glass with such sudden and alarming speed that Clarice does not have time to step back in shock before Graham is standing right in front of the glass, and he is watching her steadily still, through the curls that almost cover his eyes.

“So I can tell you that you are ambitious,” He says, “You are following in your father’s footsteps, and have been taken under Jack Crawford’s wing. He reminds you of your father. You are thrilled with his trust, and want to do all that you can to earn your place, and gain approval. You want to prove them all wrong, the naysayers who told you that you’d never make it. You want to show them that a girl that is only a generation away from ‘poor trash’ can make it all the way to the FBI. You think I can’t hear the accent you’ve tried so desperately to shed? Pure West Virginia, if I am not mistaken.”

Clarice swallows her response; her veiled West-Virginian-accented words.

His eyebrow arches, almost cockily, “I see it in you because I did it myself. I rid myself of my Louisiana roots and my time in New Orleans,” and he uses a Louisiana accent as he says it, presumably unearthing it after years of misuse. “I got myself a life, a house out on my own away from the people whose thoughts were too loud, and got a job in the FBI. But things did not go swimmingly for me, the empathy got too much and I couldn’t keep my head above the water. But you, Starling, maybe you think you can rise above it? Maybe you can fly?” His blue eyes are unwavering and fixed, but they are not unkind. There is confliction there, she can see it. His voice drops to a whisper; “My advice to you is to fly away. Fly away as fast as you can. You are playing with the monsters here, little bird. Some see you as vulnerable, and want to help you. Others see you as vulnerable and they want to crush you.”

“Which one are you, Will Graham?” Clarice cannot help but ask, her voice accusing, but no more than a whisper itself.

Graham blinks, and his gaze drops. The moment breaks. “I want to help you,” He says.

“I don’t believe you,” Clarice whispers.

“Yes you do,” Graham corrects, confident, and ultimately, correct. “Now fly away little Starling.”

It is so close to how Hannibal Lecter had bid her farewell, that she finds herself wondering whose mannerism it is that the other picked up; is it Will Graham reflecting Hannibal Lecter, or Lecter reflecting Graham? They are one and the same, she realises. And they are being kept apart. Looking at Graham, she wonders how well he is surviving the separation. She wonders what Graham is like with Hannibal Lecter, if this confliction is what he is like when they are apart.

She finds herself leaving, before her mind can catch up, still stumbling as it is under how Will Graham has stripped her down to her bare West Virginian roots, thought for thought, motivation for motivation. She does not say goodbye to him, she does not thank him for his time.

Will Graham’s voice follows her down the corridor; “Fly back to perceived normality, little Starling, because it’s all perceived madness in here.”


	2. Chapter 2

Jack Crawford is concerned when Clarice suggests potential mistreatment of Will Graham by Dr Chilton. But he seems more concerned about everything else.

“I forgot how perceptive Will’s empathy can truly be. If he has been in isolation for so long, I suppose all his empathy gets focused on his minority of visitors. When he is faced with you, all he can do is read you.” Jack is frowning, “When you are supposed to be reading him.”

“I did read him, Sir,” Clarice protests, a little put-out.

“At the cost of him seeing you,” Jack argues, gently, to let her know that the barb had not been intentional. “At least his answers will satisfy those who have been pushing for the interview, and you will not have to see him again.”

Clarice is somewhat disappointed. She knows she should not be, but she cannot help it. She found Will Graham intriguing, and in retrospect it had not nearly been a long enough conversation. She wants to speak to him again. She wants to understand him better. She also wants to help him, despite everything she knows. She wants to keep her promise to him to look into his accusations against Chilton, to find out whether Graham is lying or telling the truth. If he is telling the truth, she knows her good conscience will not allow her to walk away without improving conditions for him. She is deeper into his story now; she is a character in Will Graham’s story now, and for some reason, she does not want him to suffer. Even though he has made other people suffer, and killed people.

She wants to protest against not speaking to Graham again, but she swallows it down, because she knows Jack will disapprove her being so easily caught up in Graham.

“What about Hannibal Lecter?” Clarice notices that Lecter has not been mentioned. “Will I have to see him again?”

Jack looks uncomfortable, “Possibly. It depends on the Mofet lead. We may have to speak to him again. In fact, I am almost certain that whatever goose chase Hannibal has sent us on will be designed to have us coming back to him. Have you had a chance to look into Mofet?”

“Yes,” Clarice says. She spent the morning following up several ideas she had, having run Lecter’s ‘clue’ over and over in her head. “Lecter altered or destroyed most of his patients’ files prior to capture, so there isn’t any record of anyone named ‘Mofet’. But I thought that that might be the case. I then followed up something else. Lecter said to me, ‘Look deep within yourself’, and the ‘yourself’ just seemed too purposeful, too crafted. I didn’t know what it meant, so I started my search here in Baltimore, with it having been Lecter’s home for so long, and tried out several lines of inquiry. One of my internet searches did have an interesting result. There is a storage facility just outside downtown Baltimore called ‘Your Self’. I rang the business, and there is a storage unit that is leased out to a Miss Mofet.”

“Good work, Starling. Excellent work.”

“I was thinking I would check it out this afternoon.”

Jack Crawford nods, clasping his fingers under his chin. “Would you like somebody to accompany you? I could ask Mapp or Danford…”

Ardelia Mapp is Clarice’s closest friend, both amongst her colleagues and outside of work. They were roommates and study buddies at the academy, and came to the Behavioural Sciences Unit together. As much as Clarice likes to take cases with Ardelia, this is just going to be a routine observation at the storage unit, which may even be a false lead. She knows how snowed under Ardelia is at the moment with paperwork from another case, and Clarice won’t drag Ardelia out of the office just to keep her company.

Clarice shakes her head, “I can handle this, Sir. Mapp is busy with the _Malone Case_ and Danford’s on the _Buffalo Bill Case_. You need every available Agent here right now, particularly with _Bill_.”

“Don’t I know it,” Jack says, solemnly. He sighs, “Who knew that there could be so many monsters in the world?” He goes quiet, and Clarice wonders if he is revisiting memories of the many monsters he has met, or watched transform.

 _You are playing with the monsters here, little bird._ Will Graham’s voice whispers in her head.

She knows that Will Graham used to hear Garret Jacob Hobbs whispering in his head. Garret Jacob Hobbs was Will Graham’s monster, when Will Graham was the little bird. Clarice refuses to allow those tables to turn. She refuses to be the little bird to the monsters that are Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter.

“That is why we are here, Sir,” She tells Jack, “To catch them.”

She glances at the evidence board, still informing her that Buffalo Bill has killed and partially skinned five people so far. This monster is taking a little longer to catch, but hopefully not as long as it took to catch Hannibal Lecter.

***

She arrives at the _Your Self_ storage facility at 12.50pm, ten minutes early for her meeting with the owner of the facility. She sits in the car for the ten minutes, keeping the engine running to keep her hands warm, and taking the opportunity to demolish a ham and salad sandwich.

The man who meets her is only just taller than her, tanned from outdoor work, dressed in worn denim jeans and a big puffy jacket. She thinks that he might be balding under the battered baseball cap.

She introduces herself, and shows him her credentials. She knows his name is Tony Peters, because they had spoken on the phone that morning, but he introduces himself again, and shakes her hand. He has a good handshake. An honest one. He has roughened workman’s hands, like her father used to. She feels a little more at ease.

She had made the mistake of pondering what she might find in the Miss Mofet storage facility - if this is truly where Lecter intended her to go – and her imagination supplied no pleasant outcomes. But Tony seems genuine, and now her interest seems to be piquing again, and surpassing her concerns.

“Unit 31 was originally leased for ten years. Pre-paid in full,” Tony tells her as he leads her through the rows of identical storage units. “Then a year or so ago, I received a letter and a cheque in advance for the lease of the next ten years. The contract is in the name of a Miss Hester Mofet.”

“But you said on the phone that nobody has been to the unit in years?” Clarice asks, keeping pace with him, her breath ghosting in front of her in the brisk air.

“To my knowledge, nobody has been in it since the first couple of years of the lease. But that is often the case with these units, and since Miss Mofet has prepaid for another ten years, it is clearly still wanted.” Tony stops next to the storage unit with the number ‘31’ written on it, and he raps his knuckles on the heavy metal door. “This is the one.”

“Thank you,” Clarice waits for him as he looks through his keys. “Mr Peters, have you ever been inside this unit?”

“Not since it was closed up for the last time. I don’t go in them without the customers I am leasing them to. Privacy is a great concern to my customers, you understand, Agent.”

Clarice nodded, “I understand. I won’t disturb anything, I promise.”

Tony Peters nods at her and he unlocks the door. It takes a couple of wrenches to pull the door open, after years without use.

“I will wait outside for you, Agent,” Tony says.

 “Thank you, Mr Peters. I won’t be long.”

Clarice turns on her flashlight and walks into the storage unit. It’s much bigger than it looks from the outside; it is like a very large garage, chilly and with a hollow and empty feel, but she does not quite know how it feels so empty, because it is packed full of things. Things of every shape and size, and although it all seems to be ordered - books on shelves on one side, shelves and boxes of assorted trinkets and valuable-looking antiques on another, and a small group of machinery and a car at the back – she still does not know where to look first. She passes a collection of taxidermy animals and tries not to look any of them in the eye.

Clarice spots a tray filled with papers, beside a grand statuette of a stag, and she removes the dusty and paled top piece before rifling quickly through the rest. She sees nothing of value.

She browses a couple more shelves, seeing nothing of immediate interest, before moving towards the machines at the back. The car is an old classic model, and attracts her attention because the back windows are covered. She shines her flashlight through the front windows, and the front seats are empty. The front of the car is separated from the back by a screen like the ones in some cabs or limousines, and she cannot see much through it. She thinks she can make out something on the back seat.

She tests the front passenger-side door, and it opens.

She moves to the back door.

She wrenches it open, and leaps backward with fright, only just swallowing her shriek. There is someone sitting in the backseat. The person does not move. She catches her breath, swallows, and passes the beam of the flashlight over the figure. It is a mannequin in a dress. Or the body at least; the head is missing, and a plastic neck pokes up through the collar of the dress. She lets out a noise of exasperation, embarrassed despite the fact there is no-one in here but her, and the headless mannequin.

“Jesus, Clarice,” Clarice breathes to herself. “Get a grip.”

She is about to turn away from the car, because it smells musty and sweetly rotten with decay, but then she spots that on the seat beside the mannequin is an elaborate pink hat. It sits on top of something that is covered in an embroidered pink piece of material that looks like a scarf. Unable to halt her curiosity, she leans over the mannequin’s lap, and pulls the scarf away.

Unseeing eyes stare back at her.

She blanches and staggers backward so fast that she ends up falling back onto her ass on the concrete floor. Her palm scrapes the floor as she hits it. Bile burns her throat. Something in the back of her mind, wrenched from her memory, starts screaming, a terrified innocent scream.

There is a head. A head in a giant jar. A real human head.

She takes a moment to compose herself, and takes a deep breath, and scolds herself for being unprofessionally frightened. Her palm is beading blood, but she ignores it.

She finally stands back up, shines the beam of the flashlight back into the car, and it reflects off the glass, giving the female head preserved inside the large glass jar a morbid halo of light.

She cannot help but feel a sudden rush of adrenaline and anticipation.

She doesn’t know why, or when, or who this was. But she has a pretty good idea who will know.

***

Hannibal Lecter does not look surprised to see her again.

Clarice left a team of Forensics and fellow Agents picking apart the storage unit, which is now a crime scene. It turns out that there is not just the head in the jar. The ‘mannequin’ turned out to be part-fake and part-real, presumably using parts of the body of the same victim that the head belongs to. The victim is female, the head has been decorated extensively with make-up.

Jack Crawford gave in after pressure from his colleagues, and has sent Clarice back to Lecter for more quick and direct answers as to what it all means. Clarice is glad. She wants to know, she needs to know. She needs to confront him.

“Hester Mofet is an anagram, isn’t it Dr Lecter?” She demands, staring at him through the glass and attempting not to look angry, “Hester Mofet is the anagram of ‘the rest of me’. Miss Hester Mofet; Miss The Rest Of Me.” She takes a breath. “You rented that storage unit, didn’t you?”

“Have you seen Will?” Lecter asks.

“You used that garage to store the rest of you, didn’t you?”

“You did not answer my question,” Lecter says.

“Because you are not answering mine,” Clarice bites back.

Lecter smiles, before promptly changing the subject. “How did you graze your hand? It has been bleeding.”

Clarice does not know how he knows. But if he is able to smell what creams and perfumes she uses, she will not be surprised if the cannibal can smell her blood, disconcerting as that thought is. She curls her fingers into her hand, and turns it away from him.

“It’s just a scratch.”

“Have you seen Will?”

“I saw him yesterday.”

“Is he well?”

“He is well enough, and he knows that the dogs are in safe hands. Like I promised.”

“He is well enough,” Lecter repeats. “Elaborate, please.”

Clarice does not want Lecter to know Will Graham’s true condition. She does not know how Lecter will react to that.

“We are looking into Dr Chilton’s treatment of Mr Graham,” She chooses her words carefully, “As I promised you.”

“I can only glean from that, that from seeing Will you have decided that my concerns have grounds. This is highly worrisome, Agent Starling. I would like it dealt with swiftly and severely.”

Hannibal Lecter is in no position to make demands, but he is correct in that his concerns are potentially accurate. She knows nothing of any violence towards Will Graham - apart from the one incident that had had Chilton banned from interacting directly with either Lecter or Graham - but Graham’s current condition suggests neglect. It just needs to be determined whether it was self-inflicted, or inflicted upon him. If it is the latter, then Dr Chilton will have some answering to do. If it is the former, then Will Graham will likely not be believed again.

“We are looking into it.”

“That does not offer me much comfort,” Lecter informs her, “Much of my experience with the FBI has proved the majority of you to be really quite unintelligent.”

“Compared to you, Doctor?”

“Compared to me, yes.”

“You see yourself as superior?”

“I see myself as a predator in a world of meek ignorance. Ignorance is a weakness of man and a weapon I utilise. It can also be unacceptable. Ignorance of Chilton’s mistreatment of William is utterly unacceptable.”

“And murder is not unacceptable? What you did to Miggs is not unacceptable?”

Lecter watches her through narrowed eyes. He cocks his head. It is calculated and dangerous.  “Miggs.” Lecter scoffs, “Unacceptable in and of himself.”

“Well, not anymore, he isn’t.”

“No,” Hannibal Lecter says, and his maroon eyes gleam, “Not anymore.”

He looks amused, triumphant, and Clarice can see that he has not one ounce of remorse for what he has done. He lets the silence hang and he watches her. Clarice does not say anything, forcing herself not to glance at the now-vacant cell beside Lecter’s own, where Miggs used to be. She feels terrible that she is almost glad that Miggs is not there whispering horrible things at her.

“Dr Lecter,” Clarice finally breaks the quiet, determined. “Whose head is in that glass jar? You wanted me to find her, so who is Miss Mofet?”

His eyes are unnervingly still as he replies, “Her real name is Benjamina Raspail, a former patient of mine. I did not kill her. I merely tucked her away very much as I found her, after she had missed three appointments.”

Clarice sees Hannibal Lecter, in her mind, knocking on Raspail’s door, opening it, looking inside, and finding Raspail like that. She does not know how he really reacted, but her mind sees him smiling that self-satisfied smile.

And then she latches on the admission that Lecter did not kill her. If Lecter had killed her, he would have said so, because he is proud of his work now that he has been exposed to the world. Lecter did not kill Raspail, which means someone else did.

“If you didn’t kill her,” Clarice asks, “Then who did?”

She is disappointed when Lecter shrugs, “Who can say?” He replies, “It was the best thing for her, really. Her therapy was going nowhere. She was not particularly intriguing; an open book. Only in death did she become interesting. I see her as an experiment; a fledgling killer’s first effort at transformation. It is a naïve and inexperienced piece, but important. How did it make you feel when you saw it, Agent Starling?”

“Scared at first.” Jesus, she had been afraid. But then…then… “Exhilarated,” she admits honestly, because she had. As she had inspected the scene and called Jack, her heart had been racing, she had felt the adrenaline pumping, and she had felt the thrill of the chase, as she always did at a breakthrough in a case.

“Does the idea of catching Buffalo Bill exhilarate you too, Clarice Starling?”

Clarice blinks, confused. “This isn’t about Buffalo Bill. I am not involved in that case.”

“Isn’t it?” Hannibal Lecter asks her, coolly meaningful, “And aren’t you?”

“No,” She says, firmly, “And no.”

“If you are sure.” Lecter raises an eyebrow, “Would you like to be?”

Clarice is surprised by the question. “Why?” She asks, “Do you know something about him?”

“I might,” Lecter smiles at her, “If I saw the case file. You could get that for me, couldn’t you?”

Clarice feels herself being pulled away from the task at hand. She refuses to be pulled into Hannibal Lecter’s little game.

“What do you mean by ‘transformation’, Doctor? You said that Raspail’s killer was trying to transform her. What do you mean?”

“I can tell you many things about transformation. I have transformed many people into something else. But if you want to really gain an understanding, I would suggest that you speak to Will. Will knows what transformation _feels_ like, because he has experienced many transformations; his own, and others. Dolarhyde attempted to transform himself into something else, and Will got inside his head, so deep that for months afterwards he bore dragon’s wings in his unconscious.”

Clarice does not know whether she will be allowed to speak to Will Graham again. “Will you tell me about transformation?”

“Will you get me the Buffalo Bill case file?”

Clarice will not allow herself to become frustrated. “What did you mean by a ‘fledgling killer’? Are you saying that the killer has killed since, killed again?”

“I am offering you a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill," Lecter says slowly, deliberately, "Based on the case evidence. I can help you catch him, Clarice.”

And that is when the realisation sinks in. Hannibal Lecter knows who Buffalo Bill is. He knows, just as he knows that Benjamina Raspail was Buffalo Bill’s first victim, years and years ago. That is why Lecter sent Clarice to that storage unit.

“You know who he is, don’t you?” she asks, and she _knows._ “Tell me. Tell me who decapitated your patient, Doctor.”

Hannibal Lecter tuts at her. “Oh no, that is not how these things work. I have offered to look at the Buffalo Bill case file. I would take me up on my offer.”

“At what cost?” She knows he will not do anything out of the goodness of his heart. She doubts there is any good in Hannibal Lecter’s heart. Not even his apparent love for Will Graham, because that is not pure or good either.

“Chilton has taken my drawings.” Lecter gestures at the bare walls around him, his pictures of architecture in Florence, his depictions of Will Graham, all gone. “Punishment for Miggs, you see. Sometimes the _good_ Doctor plays static noise straight into the cell, and turns up the volume. It is hardly Beethoven or Handel. He is enjoying his petty torments, and I most certainly am not. Chilton is mistreating Will and he is irritating me. I have been in this room for over a year, now, and I know that they will never let me out, and that Will and I have years and years left in our cages. What I would like is a view. I would like a window. I would like to see Will Graham. I would like us both to be in a federal institution far away from Dr Chilton.”

“Well,” Clarice says, angry, because Hannibal Lecter should not be allowed to make demands after all he has done. “We can’t all get what we want.”

Lecter levels her with an unimpressed look. “Clearly,” He says, and his tone is flat and displeased. Silence holds for a beat or two, before Lecter speaks again, a little more airily and a lot more devious, “You want to catch Buffalo Bill before he kills someone else, but the clock is ticking. You want to save that life. But as you say, we can’t all get what we want.”

“If you told me,” Clarice says, trying and failing not to sound desperate, “If you told me who he is…”

“I won’t know who he truly is until I look at the case file,” Lecter says, unmoving, “All good things to those who wait, Agent Starling. And I can wait. I have waited. But how long can you wait? How long can Jack wait? Because it is only a matter of time before Bill finds himself another.”

“And if I did,” Clarice bends, just a little, “If I did get you the case file. What would be your demands?”

Lecter smiles, “I thought you would see things my way.” He takes a couple of steps forward, but Clarice stays resolutely still on her side of the glass. “Two conditions. Firstly, I would like to see Will. I would like to spend some time with Will face-to-face.”

“They would never allow you both to be in the same cell.”

“Adjoining cells would be satisfactory. As long as I would be able to see him, speak to him, reach him.”

"A permanent situation like that would never be allowed."

"I am not asking for the long-term. I am merely asking for a short meeting. An evening together."

“I do not know if that would be allowed. And Mr Graham may not wish to…”

“Will will want to,” Hannibal dismisses immediately. “And the rest can be discussed later. I would just require your word that you will look into the possibility of making that happen. The second condition would also just require your word. I would like you to look into the moving of myself and Will away from Dr Chilton.”

Clarice has no idea how Lecter has managed to turn the conversation into the demanding of conditions and her word to keep them, but he has.

And the craziest thing is, she does not think the terms are wholly unacceptable in return for learning the identity of Buffalo Bill.

“And if I did those things and brought you the case file, you would tell me who he is?”

“I can give you a detailed profile.”

“Not a name?”

“A profile. And as I said before, you will gain an even better idea of who Bill is and why he does what he does by showing Will the case file, too.”

Clarice stares at him for a moment, weighing up the options in her head. “I would need to report back and speak to my superiors. It would be their decision, not mine.”

“I am counting on that, Agent Starling. You seem a hard woman to sway. Now, if you would not mind leaving me on that note, I would be grateful. I will inevitably have a visit from Freddie Lounds today, once she learns of the crime scene at _Your Self Storage_. I would like a moment of peace and quiet before she descends.”

She feels like saying no, just to spite him. But his wrath seems like something that would be tangible, and she would not feel safe denying him, even from the opposite side – the free side – of the glass. She leaves.

***

“We cannot allow Hannibal to make demands and give him what he wants,” Jack says. He is not in a good mood, having had the meeting with Lecter recalled to him. “He is clearly up to something.”

“But he has offered a profile of Buffalo Bill,” Clarice protests.

“Will can give us a profile on Buffalo Bill.”

“But Lecter may know who he is.”

“Or he may not and is just toying with us. Either way, Will would be able to give us the exact same thing.”

“How? We give him the _Buffalo Bill Case_ file?”

“No. He should not be privy to that,” Jack says firmly, “We will give him some photographs of Raspail and see what he has to say of the supposed ‘transformation’ attempt. I will give you some photographs and we will contact Chilton to see if we can…”

“Sir, excuse the interruption, but I thought you did not want me speaking to Will Graham again?”

“If you are up to it, he knows you now, and if anyone will get him to speak it will be you. If you don’t want to…”

“No. No I will do it.” Clarice says. “But, Sir, I just think, that if there is even the slightest of chances that Lecter knows the identity of Buffalo Bill, shouldn’t that be worth taking?”

“I am not that desperate,” Jack says, before muttering, “Yet.” He looks up at her, “Hannibal has a habit of making murderers of his patients. If Bill was also an ex-patient of Hannibal’s and showed promise as a killer, then Hannibal will have taken an interest him. And there is a chance that he will have told Bedelia Du Maurier about it. I am bringing her in to see what she knows.”

Clarice blinks. Frowns. She is surprised that he has already decided to call her. She is surprised that he has decided to call her at all.

Dr Du Maurier is a force to be reckoned with. Jack dislikes her, Clarice is intimidated by her. Most of all, Dr Du Maurier will despise being drawn back into the world of Hannibal Lecter.

Bedelia Du Maurier had fallen off the map as soon as it had been announced that Hannibal Lecter had escaped, and that he and Will Graham had disappeared following the fight with Francis Dolarhyde. Jack had tried to track her down, in case she had heard from Lecter, but to no avail. Just like Lecter and Graham, she had disappeared. She had remained invisible until six months after it was revealed that Lecter and Graham were alive, and had made their journey across the sea to Europe. She had turned up, and she was missing a leg.

Jack had demanded to know how it had happened. They had all known that it had had to have been Lecter’s doing, which meant that Du Maurier had known that Hannibal Lecter had still been alive for a long time before he and Graham had been discovered and moved to Europe. Jack had accused her of withholding crucial information from the authorities, and that lives could have been saved if she had told them that Lecter and Graham had not drowned, and were still living in the US. Du Maurier, however, had calmly told them all that once Hannibal Lecter had escaped, she had taken an extended vacation skiing in the Alps, and a terribly damaging accident had eventually required amputation. It was a story that matched their failed attempts to locate her, and a doctor from a private Italian hospital had provided a patient record. Jack didn’t believe it, and Clarice did not either. But Du Maurier had an alibi, had told them icily that Hannibal Lecter had not taken her leg, and had demanded that they never contact her about Hannibal Lecter again.

And now Jack is bringing her back in.

Jack must know what Clarice is thinking, because he says, “I just need to explore all possible avenues before handing so much intel and power to Hannibal. I need to see if Du Maurier knows anything about Raspail or Buffalo Bill’s true identity before we resort to going back to Hannibal.”

“But we will resort to speaking to Will Graham?”

“Will’s insight might be more open and honest than any game that Hannibal will inevitably try to play.”

***

When Clarice sends the photographs of the Raspail crime scene through the food-delivery drawer into Will Graham’s cell, he picks them up immediately and scans them.

“Can you see them without your glasses?”

Graham glances up at her and nods. “Images are fine. It’s the words that I have trouble reading.”

It has only been one day since she last saw him, but Graham somehow looks even more tired and dishevelled.

“I have spoken to my superiors,” She informs him before she can stop herself, “They are going to look into Chilton’s treatment of you.”

He distractedly glances at her again, nods shortly in acknowledgement, and then goes back to looking at the photographs with great intensity.

He stands there for a minute or so, in silence, and Clarice waits for him, watches his eyes move and his intelligent mind work.

“Do you want to know what I see?” He says finally.

“Yes, Mr Graham. I want to know what you see.”

“I see the first murder of a killer who has thought about it for some time, but I don’t think this is a recent murder. The fading and wear on the dress and the condition of the head, it looks like it has been like that for some time. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” Clarice admits, “You are correct.”

“The victim, female, looks to be in her thirties. Do you think the killer is male or female?” He asks her.

“Male,” She says immediately.

“I agree,” Graham replies. “A male in his late twenties or early thirties at the time of the murder, most likely. He will be older now, of course.”

“And what do you think of the victim and how she has been displayed?”

Graham looks up at her through his long hair, “This reminds me of the first time I was locked up in here. Beverly used to visit me in here and ask me questions about killers. I used to help her and Jack, even though my hands were cuffed, sorting through photographs of a palette of skin colours. Questions about the Chesapeake Ripper…Did Jack or the others ever tell you what happened to Beverly?”

Clarice knows. She does not reply.

“She discovered the Chesapeake Ripper, but Hannibal got to her first. Just like he got to Miriam. Just like he framed me,” Will tells her, and for the first time, she does not sense fondness for Lecter in his words and it surprises her.

“Mr Graham,” She says, “Dr Lecter is asking to see you. To spend some time with you. I do not know yet if it will be allowed, but if it is allowed…would you want to see him?”

She sees Graham’s fingers tighten around the photographs in his hand. It takes him a long time to say, “Yes.” And she finds herself wondering if he means it.

She knows how co-dependant Lecter and Graham were whilst on the run. She knows they are partners, and lovers. Will Graham is the only person that Hannibal Lecter has considered an equal. She knows their devotion to each other. But she also wonders how Will Graham is coping in the separation. Is he relieved by the separation? Or does he miss Lecter and Lecter’s company?

There was only one incident during their time on the run that she knows for certain that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham were apart. It did not last long, but it raised a mystery that had her and Jack and the rest of the team baffled for a good few weeks:

Two bodies had been found on the same day in Italy. The first murder had taken place in Naples, which Italian authorities contacted them about, because the body of the victim had been of such close resemblance to Will Graham that they had believed it could be him. The second murder scene had been discovered in Turin, hours away, and this body had been transformed into the tar-black and antlered Wendigo that had haunted Will Graham’s fevered dreams. One body had supposedly been Will Graham and the other had supposedly been Will Graham’s work. The case had been solved when it was discovered that the body that looked like Will Graham was only an uncanny lookalike, and had been killed by Hannibal Lecter, and the Wendigo in Turin had been created by Will Graham. Why the case had been such a puzzle at first, was because of the stubborn belief of Jack and Clarice that Lecter and Graham would not have parted for any reason. When this had turned out to be the case, the only conclusion that could be drawn – a conclusion that Freddie Lounds had revelled in – was that Lecter and Graham had had a falling out, parted ways, and then killed their victims and displayed them in such ways to spite each other. Presumably, the pair had reconciled a little time later, as the next murder believed to be theirs seemed to be a collaborative work.

“May I ask you something, Mr Graham?”

“That is why you are here, isn’t it?" Graham asks dryly, "To ask questions.”

“Yes,” Clarice says. She is learning that Graham can be quite catty when he wishes to be. “I wanted to know about the bodies that the Italian authorities found in Turin and Naples on the same day. We know that the victim in Naples was the work of Dr Lecter, and that the one in Turin was yours. Why were the pair of you separated?”

“He made me angry,” Graham’s eyes are shadowed in the gloomy cell, “So I left him.”

So, it was true. It _had_ been an argument that had separated them during that time. But that is not what Clarice is asking for.

“So the creature that you created in Turin, you made that out of anger?”

“Yes.”

“It was an unusual transformation.”

“It was a Wendigo. A cannibalistic creature. I used to see it in here…” Graham stabs a finger at his head, “Whilst I was ill and hunting for the Chesapeake Ripper.”

“It is how you saw Dr Lecter when you did not know it was him?”

“Yes.” Graham is watching her, his gaze steady, and he is actually looking her in the eye, which he has not done much of before. “Why do you ask?”

“I wondered if you would tell me about transformation? About why you transform bodies, like you transformed that restaurant owner from Turin into the Wendigo?”

“Because you think that that is what this is,” Graham says, holding up the photographs. “You think this is an attempt of transforming the victim?”

“I think so, yes.”

Graham smiles a forced, knowing smile, “Hannibal must like you.”

Clarice frowns, and wonders what he means, and where he got that from. “Mr Graham, I do not think…”

“You are one of the bright and perceptive minds he finds interesting. He likes you.” He says it with a tone that suggests that he himself does not like her that much. “He has told you something about the woman who was killed, hasn’t he? So you want my insight into the one who killed her. You want the reasons for the murder?”

“Yes, Mr Graham. I do.”

Graham is still and silent for a moment. “You are going to put another murderer in my head, you know that don’t you?”

Clarice swallows. “Yes.”

“Jack must have approved this of course,” Graham says thoughtfully, more to himself than Clarice, moving to perch on the edge of his bed, fanning the photographs over his knees. “So he must be ok with putting me on the line again.”

 _It was more of a ‘Rather you than Hannibal’ decision_ Clarice thinks, but she does not say it. She does not reply at all.

She watches.

She watches him, in the shadows of the cell, and sees his face move twitchily as he observes each individual photo. She watches his hands hover and tremor over them. She hears him click his tongue and shudder a breath.

“He doesn’t know what he is, or what he wants to be,” Will Graham says eventually, and his voice is deeper and heavier and far, far away. “He just knows he wants to change. He needs to change. He doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin.”

Graham’s whole body flinches and suddenly he is on his feet, photographs scattering to the ground.

“He doesn’t know how to change, and he feels trapped and so very angry. He wants to be freed. He wants to be free to be himself, but he doesn’t know what he wants to be. And before he can change himself, can he change someone else? Can he transform someone else? He needs to know so he can transform himself.”

“A fledgling killer, in a first act of transformation,” Clarice inputs.

It is like Graham does not hear her. “He knows the victim. He has a close relationship with the victim. He shares some things with the victim, but not everything. She is afraid of some of the things he tells her. And one day he has just had too much. It’s too much to take. But once it’s done and the victim is dead, he finds he likes it. He likes transforming her. He makes her into something false and yet very real, she is a mannequin, a dummy, a trial. He painstakingly incorporates the mannequin-plastic, applies the make-up, and takes great care in choosing the dress and the hat and the scarf. The transformation is bright and beautiful...”

“Who is he, Mr Graham? Can you see who he is?” She asks urgently.

She had wondered, before coming here, whether Lecter had told Graham about Raspail's body in the storage facility during their time together, and that that meant Graham knew more about it than he was letting on. But his reactions here, now, give her the impression that he is seeing this crime scene with completely new and unknowing eyes, which means that Lecter had been keeping secrets from Graham still.

“He is angry and confused, at first, when he first kills her," Graham says, "But afterward, during the transformation, he does not feel remorse. I think he finds he likes it. Probability is, is that the burgeoning psychopath is truly kick-started with a first taste of murder. He finds he likes it. It’s yet another way of being something else. But this murder was long ago, so if the murderer is still alive, he likely has a taste for it now. Maybe he is bolder. Maybe he isn’t so confused because he has a goal, a new passion. Maybe now he knows what he wants to be. Maybe he has killed again.”

_‘Bill Skins Fifth’_

The headline swims in Clarice’s vision. If Lecter is right, and the killer of Raspail is indeed Buffalo Bill, then yes, Bill has gained a taste for murder. Yes he is bolder. And yes he has a goal, certain targets. The people he kidnaps, kills and skins are not much alike themselves in sex or look or race, but they were all of a fairly similar size, and were all skinned and found washed up on riversides. They are nothing like Raspail, they are not transformed, but as Graham says, maybe the killer has realised what he wants, now, and is working on transforming himself rather than testing transformation on someone else.

“But do you know who he is?” She asks, slowly, hoping for something. Some clue. Any clue.

Graham breaks from his mantra and stares at her with eyes that do not seem to be his own. “No. I see what he sees, not his physical identity. And even then, that itself is changing.” He pauses, and points to one of the photographs, “The FBI will be investigating the severing of the neck, I assume? He was taller than the victim and has big hands.” He lifts his hands in demonstration. “He was clumsy in the murder, maybe because it was his first, but his hands were steady when he transformed her into the mannequin and when he applied the make-up.”

He falls silent.

Clarice waits.

Graham gives her no more. Eventually he bends down and collects the discarded photographs.

“Have I helped you and Jack?” He asks quietly, dejectedly, and his voice sounds like his own again.

“Yes,” She says, and she thinks so. All that Graham has said could be incredibly useful to the case.

“What do you think of the transformation itself, Mr Graham?”

“This one is an experiment, as I said,” Graham says.

“And you think the murderer would go on to try and transform himself, rather than his victims?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“And what would he want to transform into?”

“Whatever it is he has decided he wants to be. I could not guess at that, he is likely a psychopath and it could honestly be anything. I have known killers want to become animals and mythical creatures, to grow new life from the bodies of the dead, and to make murals out of the colours of human skin. To know more about what this man is now I would need further evidence, or a more recent example of a murder. But, of course, you have only just found this body, so you will not know if he has killed again.” His eyes find her again, and they are eerily knowing. “Unless you do?”

“No, we do not know.”

Graham hums. “Lie to me all you like, you will come to me for help again. Transformation is my specialty.”

“Because you also transformed yourself.”

Graham shook his head, “Hannibal was the catalyst. I did not want to become any more than what I was. I was afraid, and lost in my own head, and lost in other people's. But Hannibal saw the chrysalis, closed off from the world and he wanted to nurture it. He wanted to encourage the caterpillar hiding away inside to flourish. He made me transform to the butterfly that takes to the skies. But Hannibal said to me once; ‘I can feed the caterpillar, I can whisper through the chrysalis, but what hatches follows its own nature and is beyond me’.”

“And is that what happened?”

“Hannibal did not know what to expect. And I was never quite what he expected. I was beyond him. My final transformation was beyond him. He just got to sit back and watch. He expected bedazzling colours and astounding beauty, but I was always a little more like a moth than a butterfly. Subdued and a hundred shades of grey turmoil. A moth is a creature of the moonlight. The head of death burns bright in the moonlight, and blood is black. Did you know that? Blood looks black in the moonlight.” Graham stares at her, and it is unnerving, “Did you know that?”

She does know that.

“I did not know that,” She lies.

“Well one day you will see. You will see. You will see me. You will see him. You will see the man that did this.” He puts the photographs in the food drawer and sends them back to her. “And before your current case is done you will see yourself in clearer tones than ever before.”

“Why?”

“Because you are spending time with Hannibal Lecter,” Will Graham says, “And that is what Hannibal Lecter does.”

***

Frederick Chilton is waiting for her as she leaves the gated corridor in which Will Graham’s cell is situated.

“Well?” He asks.

“He has provided an insight.”

“And do I get to hear that insight?”

“I cannot share any confidential information until I clear it with Jack Crawford, Dr Chilton, I am sorry.”

“And if I decided to severely restrict visiting hours with Lecter and Graham? How would your investigation go then?”

“You could do that, Dr Chilton, but then I would miss the pleasure of your company.”

Chilton watches her sceptically, but finally his scarred mouth smiles. “Flattery, Starling. Well played.”

***

Bedelia Du Maurier is not so easy to appease.

She sits in the interrogation room, her face stony and frostily beautiful. Her lips are pursed and her eyes are blazing. She is wearing a suit jacket and a long black skirt, which hides the fact that one of her legs is false.

“What complete and utter idiocy,” She sneers.

Clarice watches Jack from behind the reflective glass. He does not even twitch at the insult, but Clarice knows that Jack has very little patience for the woman in front of him. He does not like her. But he has decided that he should be the one to question her, and Clarice is secretly glad, because Bedelia Du Maurier is apparently the queen of glaring daggers.

“I cannot believe you have made such a foolish decision, particularly after the absolute mess of last time. The last time you got Hannibal involved in a case, he worked it in his favour to escape. Do you not think he will do exactly the same thing this time?”

“We are acting with caution and hindsight. It won’t happen again.”

“Really? Because I thought I heard mention that it is your new protégé that is running the questioning. It sounds like Will Graham Mark-2 to me, and it is a terrible decision. You have made terrible decisions here, Crawford. Leave Hannibal out of this. Do not give in to any of his demands and leave him to rot where he is.”

“You are a lot less protective of Hannibal than you once were, Bedelia.”

“I have lost a lot of things since becoming associated with Hannibal Lecter. Any move to ‘protect’ him has rather been a move to protect myself.”

“Lost a lot of things, like losing a leg?”

“I have told you before,” She says curtly, leaning forward in her seat, “And I will tell you again, since you seem incapable of grasping even the most simple of information; I lost my leg after a skiing accident.”

“You think I truly believe that?”

“That is what I am telling you,” Du Maurier shuts him down. “You have not brought me here to interrogate me about that, Crawford, and if you do not get to your point I have every right to get up and leave. I came here because you asked – not particularly nicely, I might add – but do not think that I do not know my rights in this situation. You want my help about something, so ask it, so I can leave, and pretend that you did not just drag me right back into Hannibal’s world again.”

Clarice watches Jack deliberate, his gaze level on Du Maurier’s face.

“I do not know if you have heard about Buffalo Bill, the serial killer?”

Bedelia Du Maurier scoffs, “Everyone knows about that. It is getting a little embarrassing for you all, now, isn’t it? Five down and numerous to go. Though, granted, this is nowhere near the levels of embarrassment that Hannibal caused you.”

“You were his ‘bride’, Bedelia,” Jack says, “That must be a little embarrassing for you too, mustn’t it?”

Du Maurier sniffs. “I am not his bride. Will Graham is his bride, and happy to be such. I warned Graham, but apparently he wanted Hannibal’s company more than he wanted his wife’s, his stepson’s, yours…”

“Enough,” Jack snaps.

Dr Du Maurier produces an unfriendly smile, and sits back in her chair again, sitting upright and proper again.

“What has Buffalo Bill got to do with Hannibal?” She asks.

“Hannibal sent us to a storage unit, one that he has leased for around a decade. Inside we found the body of a woman named Benjamina Raspail. She was a patient of Hannibal’s, about ten years ago. You were Hannibal’s psychiatrist, his confidant for many years. Does the name mean anything to you?”

Du Maurier shakes her head. “No. He did not discuss many of his patients with me. Will Graham and a rare few others being the exception.”

“Hannibal has suggested that he knows who the murderer was too, and we have reason to believe that that murderer may have become what we now know as Buffalo Bill. Were there any patients around ten years ago that Hannibal discussed with you as having potential? Any that he had a distinct interest in?”

Du Maurier looks thoughtful, but after a while she shakes her head, “Nothing springs to mind.”

“Will says that the man that killed Raspail wanted to become someone else. He wanted to transform into something else. So if he was a patient of Hannibal’s he could have had some form of obsession with…”

“Excuse me,” Du Maurier says, and it is not a polite statement, “Did you just say that you have involved Will Graham in this case _as well_?”

“Will’s insight is…”

“Not effective anymore, because he is as much a killer as the ones he gets in the heads of. He is not a reliable source. Not that he was much of one in the first place. Neither of them are reliable sources.”

“Neither are you,” Jack reminds her, sounding increasingly unhappy, “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” She agrees, “Because it is clear that you are in such dire desperation to find Buffalo Bill that you have made the terrible decision to recruit their help. At least you have given me forewarning to move far away again before Hannibal’s next escape.”

“That is not going to happen.”

“Isn’t it?” She is glaring at him now.

Jack sighs, and his mask descends a little as he rubs a hand across his mouth, “If you can really give us no information then my colleagues will urge me to go to Hannibal again.”

“I am sorry, Crawford, but I cannot recall this Raspail, or whoever her killer might have been. Maybe if I heard the supposed name of the killer…but I assume that is something that Hannibal is keeping to himself?”

“He is.”

“Of course he is. You are all flying into his web like desperate little flies.”

“I think we are done here,” Jack says.

“I think so.”

Clarice watches Du Maurier walk towards the door, whilst Jack remains sitting at the table, his face dropping into his hands when Du Maurier's back is turned.

Clarice rushes after Du Maurier.

“Dr Du Maurier?” She calls.

Bedelia Du Maurier stops, turns and gives her a calculating once-over.

“Starling, isn’t it?” Du Maurier asks.

“Yes.”

“Hannibal’s new friend.”

“I am not his friend, Dr Du Maurier,” Starling says, looking at her pointedly. “Dr Lecter has a tendency to maim or eat his friends.”

Bedelia Du Maurier looks stunned for all of a millisecond, before it slips away just as quickly. “Then do be careful, Starling, he likes the taste of wild birds.”

“And how did he find the taste of you?” Clarice bites back, “A little too salty?”

Du Maurier actually lets out a dry, bitter laugh. “Something like that,” She says, and it’s the closest thing to an admission that Hannibal Lecter had indeed eaten her leg that Clarice knows she is ever going to get. “The next time that you want to question me, make sure to call me,” She pulls a business card from her purse, “As I am going to be going a long way away from here.”

“Are you really that afraid of him, Dr Du Maurier?”

“Are you really _not_ that afraid of him? You should be. You will be. Just as you should be afraid of that twitchy little man he found so tempting. There is a reason Hannibal sees Will Graham as an equal. Goodbye, Agent Starling.”

“Goodbye, Dr Du Maurier.”

Clarice goes to find Jack, and finds him still sitting in the interrogation room. He acknowledges her with a nod when she enters.

“Well that went well,” He says glumly. “But it is Bedelia Du Maurier. I should have expected no less.”

“Sir, what do you think we should…”

“Sir,” Ardelia’s voice joins the conversation. Clarice turns and sees Ardelia standing at the door to the room. Ardelia glances at Clarice with a small smile, and then back at Jack. “We have just had a call. Another body has been found. A young woman. Been in the water a week. They are pretty sure it’s a Buffalo Bill situation.”

***

They travel to West Virginia; Clarice, Jack, Jimmy Price and Brian Zeller. Clarice had not been involved in the _Buffalo Bill Case_  before,but since getting involved with the Lecter and Graham interviews, she is more involved than she possibly could ever have imagined.

“Is that what the interviews were really for?” She had asked Jack before they left, “You knew Lecter would be interested in the _Buffalo Bill Case_ , and that there was a chance that he would ask to see the _Buffalo Bill Case_ file – that he would have an insight?” She had watched Jack, seen his reaction and known she was right, “If that was the case, then it would have nice to have been in on it.”

“It was decided that if you went in there with an agenda then he would know it. I know he would have. He would have toyed with you and turned to stone.”

“But you didn’t want to involve him at all.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And you picked me because?”

“The reasons I laid out to you. You were the best Agent for the job, but I gave you every opportunity to back out. Now you are in on the _Buffalo Bill Case_ too, so I ask you again, would you like to back out?”

Clarice did not need to think about it. “No,” She had said.

“Good,” Jack had replied.

Jack fills her in on the _Buffalo Bill Case_ during the journey there.

“He kidnaps them, and then keeps them alive for around three days. We don’t know why. There is no evidence of rape or physical abuse. All the mutilation you see in these photos is post-mortem. After those days of captivity, he shoots them, skins them and dumps them, each body in a different river. The water leaves us no useful traces of further evidence. Although the victims are of both genders, different race and are skinned in different places each time, the manner of death is identical, so we know it’s the same killer.”

Zeller, who is sitting in the back seat with Price, leans over the seat to point at one of the photographs in Clarice’s hands, of a dead girl lying bloated and face down on a river bank.

“That’s Fiona Bimmel, who we have deduced was the first one he killed because her body was the only one he took the trouble to weight down, so she was actually the third victim found. After her, he got lazy.”

Price then leans forward and points at two more of the photographs; two men, equally bloated and lying dead on riverbanks. One has large portions of skin missing from his stomach. Clarice instinctively curls her lip and swallows down the disgusted horror.

“Max Jenning and Joseph Lowoski, the second and third victims,” Price says, then points to the next two, “Ella Roberts and Samuel Thackery, fourth and fifth.”

“Here,” Jack passes Clarice a map, “Circles where the victims were abducted, arrows where their bodies were found. The girl who has just been found washed up here,” He points, “Elk River, West Virginia. So, what do you make of Bill, Starling? It will be interesting to get a view from a new set of eyes.”

“He is a white male. His victims are all of different race, both genders, which would usually suggest that the attacks are random, but I think in this case that they are more calculated than that. The physiques and sizes of the bodies and the way he takes the skins, it seems more planned. He’s not a drifter. He has his own house somewhere, not an apartment, because what he does with them takes privacy.” She thinks about what Will Graham had said about the murderer being in his late twenties or early thirties when he killed Raspail, and finds herself agreeing that, “He’s in his thirties or forties. He’s got real physical strength, but an older man’s self-control. He is cautious, precise, and unlike what he may have once been, he is not impulsive. It is also unlikely he is going to stop.”

“Why do you say that?”

She thinks again of what Will Graham said and again, found herself agreeing. “He has a taste for it now, and he is getting better at it now. Whatever it is he is doing…”

 _Working on his transformation,_ she thinks, with both Lecter and Graham’s voices in her head.

“Whatever it is he is doing, he will continue until he is done with his work, and even if he completes it, he might carry on.”

“Which is why we have to get him as soon as possible,” Jack says. “Good work, Starling. Do you have any other questions?”

“Just one, Sir. You never told me whether you want me to go back to Lecter, or whether you are considering his requests.”

She sees in the mirror that Zeller and Price glance at each other.

She looks sideways at Jack, and he has his eyes fixed forward on the road, “I’m considering it,” is all he says.

***

The body of the girl is lying face-up on a cold table, a sad and sorry sight, and the first thing Price says is, “Holy hell that smells something awful.”

“River bodies always smell the worst,” Zeller agrees with a nod.

“I don’t know,” Price comments, “I find burnt bodies just as bad.”

“How so?” Zeller asks, bemused, “How is that worse than this?”

“Well, with river bodies it just smells pungent, you know? But with burnt bodies you get that barbequed smell, and it’s enough to put you off meat for life.”

“You have to have a strong stomach working in this business,” Zeller counters.

“You mean you’ve never been put off meat after a case?”

“No. Have you?”

“A couple of times there have been a few weeks where I can’t even look at it.”

“Well not me,” Zeller says, “I’m a meat-lover, and nothing is going to put me off it. The closest I got was when it all came out about Hannibal…”

“Oh yeah,” Price nods, “I actually didn’t eat meat for a month after that. What about you Jack? Did you get put off meat after Hannibal?”

Clarice looks at Jack, who is looking uncomfortable and sombre. “For a little while, yes.”

“See, it’s you that’s the weird one here,” Price tells Zeller.

Zeller shrugs, “I never denied that.”

Jack clears his throat, “Gentlemen, can we…?”

“Oh, yeah, right, no problem,” Price says, and like flipping a switch, the pair of them are now in professional-mode.

“Gunshot wound over the sternum. A muzzle stamp at the top.”

“It is doubtful she is local, it looks like she has been carried a long way by the water.”

Price nods, “Two of her fingernails are broken. There’s dirt, or grit, under them. It looks like she has tried to claw her way through something. We will need to get pictures of her nails, and her teeth.”

Zeller complies with camera, moving it close to the girl’s mouth, before he narrows his eyes, “There’s something in her throat.”

“Could be debris,” Price suggests, “When a body comes out of the water, a lot of the time there is debris or leaves in the mouth.”

“It doesn’t look like that to me, hang on.”

Clarice leans forward with interest as Zeller puts his gloved hands into the girls’ mouth, and removes something with effort from her throat. He holds it up.

“What is that? A seed pod?” Zeller asks.

“It looks like a bug cocoon to me.”

“Really? How’s that then? It’s pretty big. There’s no way that could have gotten wedged in there like that.”

“Not unless somebody shoved it in there.”

“True.”

The bug cocoon is placed in an evidence beaker filled with solution.

“Let’s get her turned over.”

Once the girl is turned over, the skinning that Buffalo Bill is so infamous for is revealed; two large gaping strips of flesh missing down the length of her back to the top of her buttocks.

“What do you make of these, Jack?” Price asks, glancing up at Jack.

“It's a different area of skinning again from the previous victims,” Jack says.

“The exit wound of the gunshot is level with the second or third thoracic vertebrae, six inches right from the shoulder blades,” Zeller says, “Same as the others.”

“Ligature marks around the wrists, and not around the ankles,” Price adds, “Which suggests that the skinning was post-mortem, like the others.”

“Definitely a Buffalo Bill,” Jack confirms, severely.

 _‘Bill Skins Sixth’_ Clarice thinks.

***

“You were quiet in there, Starling,” Jack says to her after they leave the room.

“Just observing, Sir, and thinking.”

“Well, any theories would certainly be welcome.”

“I have been thinking about what Will Graham said to me.”

He side-eyes her, “His insights got to you, huh?”

“I think they were very perceptive.”

“He always was.”

“I think I could find out the origins of that bug cocoon, Sir, if you would let me. I have a couple of contacts who happen to be experts, and owe me a favour.”

“Then it’s all yours, Starling.”

***

Dan Roden and Dr Paula Pincher work in a museum that had been robbed a couple of years ago. Clarice had worked on the case and eventually caught the robber through an amateur attempt of the culprit to sell the items on. She had gotten to know Dan and Paula well, and they had been incredibly grateful for her work. Clarice likes the museum, and tries to visit at least annually.

It is merely coincidence that a previous employee of the museum – Randall Tier – had turned out to be a serial killer, and was subsequently killed and displayed in said museum by Will Graham.

“Agent Starling,” Dan greets more formerly, even as Paula grins at her and exclaims “Clarice!”

Dan is handsome, in geek-chic way, and he smiles bashfully as he shakes her hand. Paula, extremely intelligent and good-humoured, actually pulls Clarice into a hug.

“How are you?” Paula asks enthusiastically.

“Well, thank you. And yourselves?”

Paula gives her a wide smile, “Great, thank you.”

Dan nods, “Keeping well, thanks. What brings you here?”

“Something that I think will interest you both.”

The moment that Clarice produces the solution-filled beaker that the cocoon still sits in, and hands it to Paula, Paula is holding it up to the light and studying it closely. “Where the heck did this come from?” She asks Clarice, “It’s practically mush.”

“It was found behind the soft palate of a murder victim in the Elk River.”

“River?” Paula asks immediately, her gaze shooting to Clarice in interest. “It’s Buffalo Bill, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more about that.”

“We heard he had killed another on the radio,” Dan tells her, “This is a clue from a real murder case, then?” He whistles lowly, “Damn.”

Paula is inspecting the cocoon closely, “Sphingid ceratomia, maybe. It’s a big one, though. I’ll need to check morphology.”

As Paula sits at her computer, connects her microscope and starts tapping away, Dan looks at Clarice.

“Agent Starling,” he says.

“Please, call me Clarice.”

“Clarice,” He smiles, and it is charming, if a little awkward. _In a Will Graham kind of way,_ her mind supplies but she quashes it. “You haven’t been to the museum in a while,” He observes.

“I have been kept rather busy.”

“Of course,” he says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “It’s just nice to see your face here every now and then.”

She cannot help but smile a little, feeling her face heat a little. Outside of work, and apart from coffee dates or the odd movie night with Ardelia, she does not really socialize much. She never has the time; the job takes up so much of her life and attention. She doesn’t get much chance to go out for drinks, or flirt with men, because all the men she has spoken to properly in the last five months have been her colleagues or criminals.   _Or they are locked up in Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane,_ that voice interrupts again, and again she ignores it.

“Well, I will have to try and visit again soon,” She says, and means it.

“That would be good,” Dan replies, with another of those endearing smiles, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Oh honestly, Daniel, when you have quite finished crushing on Clarice,” Paula interrupts, not even looking away from her computer screen, “I have found the occupant of the cocoon.”

Both Clarice and Dan halt their conversation and gather eagerly behind Paula’s chair, staring intently at the screen and the microscope connected to it.

“What have you got?” Clarice asks.

“Clarice, meet Mr Acherontia styx,” Paula says.

“Weird,” Dan mutters, adjusting his glasses and peering closer.

Clarice looks at them both, “Sorry, what is it?”

“It’s better known as the death’s-head hawkmoth.”

Alarm bells start ringing in the back of Clarice’s mind. _A moth is a creature of the moonlight. The head of death burns bright in the moonlight, and blood is black. Did you know that?_ she hears Will Graham’s voice say.

“Where does it come from?” She asks, still distracted, running Graham’s words over in her mind for the hundredth time, but this time with this new meaning - this new implication - and wondering what the hell it all means. How he even _knew_ \- if he did know – it surely can’t be coincidence?

“That’s what’s strange,” Dan says, “They only live in Asia. Here they would have to be raised from imported eggs.”

“Somebody grew this guy,” Paula clarified, “Fed him honey and nightshade, kept him warm. Somebody loved him.”


	3. Chapter 3

_He waits in the night. Waits for his opportunity. He knows she will be coming home soon. After the last one, he found this one, and he has watched her for days, watched her and waited. Tonight is the perfect opportunity. She will help him blossom._

_His project is coming along nicely. His transformation is making progress. But he knows the police are getting desperate. He knows he has been on the news more than ever before. But he knows that this one will bring him even more fame. He knows who she is. He knows what she will make him. He knows what he wants. The police will hunt him harder, but he does not mind. He will have the satisfaction of befuddling them, because soon he will have a hundred different disguises._

_He wants to be something else. Anyone else. Everyone else._

_He sees her car pull into the designated parking space by the block of flats where she lives. He watches her get out of the car. He climbs out of his van._

_It is time for him to play his role to lure her in, make her think he is friendly and harmless._

_He could be someone else. He could be anyone else. He could be everyone else._

_He likes to play the roles he creates to lure them in, and then take them by surprise, take the people that have given him his most prominent role of all;_

_Buffalo Bill is what they call him. And that is who he is. But that is not all he is._

_He is someone else. He is anyone else. He is everyone else._

***

“Graham,” Clarice demands, storming up to Will’s cell and rapping on the glass with her knuckles. “You mentioned a moth. A death’s head moth. Why? How did you know?”

Will Graham stares back at her from where he is sitting with his back to the opposite wall, his face partially shadowed in the semi-dark. “Do you see now?” He asks, “Do you see?”

“No I don’t see,” She snaps, “I don’t see why you didn’t say something if you knew. You knew about the moth! You could have saved lives!”

“I doubt that,” Graham says, “You didn’t tell me that the killer who killed Raspail had killed again. You were the one that withheld information. I just guessed.”

“It was an accurate guess,” Clarice accuses.

“If you told me who the killer is, I could make some more accurate guesses.”

“You mean,” Clarice stops. “You mean you don’t know who Buffalo Bill is?”

Graham shrugs his shoulders. “Assuming he is the man that killed Benjamina Raspail, then I only know what he used to be, from seeing the photographs of the Raspail crime scene.” She sees his gaze sharpen from all the way across the cell, “I would be very interested to hear who he is becoming.”

Clarice has permission to tell Graham more, if only to find out how he knows about the moth. Price and Zeller had found a death’s head moth inside Benjamina Raspail’s head an hour after she had visited Paula and Dan at the museum and found out what was inside the cocoon that had been in the victim’s – now identified as a twenty-four year old named Jodie Hopkins – throat.

So she tells him. She tells him about Buffalo Bill’s kills. She does not hand him a case file to read, because he still doesn’t seem to possess glasses, and she also does not want him reading between the lines of the pages and choosing not to tell her what he sees.

“So, tell me,” She says, once she has explained everything to him, “How did you know about the death’s head moth? We found one inside Raspail’s skull, but you surely could not have seen that.”

Graham had stood up part-way through her summary of the case, and had approached the glass step by step, as his interest increased. He is now only a few paces away from her on the other side of the glass. His short beard and long hair look more unkempt than ever, and yet, he manages to look purposefully bedraggled, rather than merely disheveled through alleged neglect.

“Bill is transformative,” Graham explains, sounding like it should be obvious, “He is wrapping himself in a cocoon to become something big and beautiful. But he is not as bold as a butterfly. He is much more secluded and private. He is a moth.”

He pauses, as she deliberates whether that is something he could have truly seen or not.

“Also,” Graham says quietly, with a deliberately-self-deprecating, slanting smile, “There were pieces of moth wings in the footwell of the car. I saw them in the pictures.”

“They were dismissed as old butterfly or moth wings,” Clarice remembers, “From one that had gotten trapped in the car.”

“Of course they were dismissed, ignorance is a terrible trait. And they were moths wings,” Graham tells her, “Not as vibrant as a butterfly, or as translucent as a firefly, no no, a moth’s wings. It drew me in like a bright fishing fly, even though the wings had become brittle and dulled with time.”

“But how did you know that it was a death’s head moth?”

“That is for me to know,” Graham says.

“No,” Clarice protests angrily, “If you had believed the wings in the crime scene photographs to be more important than they were, then you should have said something. You could have saved lives.”

“Yes, you said that before. But how on earth could I? I had only seen the photographs of one crime scene, and the girl you just found in the river was dead before I even looked at those photographs.” He shrugs, “But besides, even if I did know, why would I tell you? Where would be the fun in that?”

“The _fun_?!”

“I always have to do all the work. It is nice to see you find these things out on your own. But you could find them out all much faster, Agent Starling, if you just opened your eyes and started to really _see._ ”

“Is that what happened to you? Why are you here right now, because you ‘opened your eyes’? Because if that is the case, I would rather not ‘see’. I’ll keep my eyes shut, thank you.”

Will Graham ignores her insult. “It was Garret Jacob Hobbs who first told me to see, but Hannibal showed me how. I assume Jack had you read up on Hobbs as well when you took my case?”

“The Minnesota Shrike,” Clarice says. “He used all parts of the victims, just like he used all the parts of the deer and other animals that he hunted.”

“Just like your Buffalo Bill skins them,” Graham agrees. “Shrikes are carnivorous birds, little Starling. Your first real challenge is a buffalo and a moth, and mine was a shrike and a stag. It’s all bees and snails, buffalos and shrikes, pigs and horses, fireflies and moths, fairies and dragons, fishing and hunting, starlings and stags.”

“If I am a Starling,” She plays along, “What are you?”

Graham looks thoughtful, “In the early days I saw a stag. A feathered stag. I grew antlers a few times. I am not a stag anymore, mind, I am many things. Many people want to be many things, but I do not know whether it is overrated and overlooked. I am stronger for it, but some might not be. And I can _see_ ,” He says, staring at her intently again, “And you cannot. But that is because you think you are unlike me, but that is not true. You could see if you looked hard enough. Jack likes you enough, and he thinks you aren’t a teacup like I was. He thinks you are strong. We will see how you last, won’t we?”

Clarice is confused, “A teacup?”

“Hannibal once said that Jack saw me as a fragile teacup, Jack’s ‘finest china’ that he used for only special guests. Jack knew I was fragile, but he took out the finest china for every notable serial killer we met. The cracks started to show.” Graham points to his shoulders, his abdomen and his forehead.

Clarice knows his file, so she knows what he is talking about. She lists the injuries – the bullet and knife wounds – in her head, as she saw them written on the page in his file. _Bullet wound to the shoulder, Jack Crawford. Bullet wound to the opposite shoulder, unknown. Laceration across the abdomen, Hannibal Lecter. Serrated incision across the forehead, Hannibal Lecter._

“The scar on your cheek,” She asks, because it is a noticeable line down one cheek, and was not on her list, which means it either happened during the fight with Dolarhyde or in the years afterwards, during Graham and Lecter’s time in hiding in the US and Europe. “How did that happen?”

Will flinched, “Rude of you to point it out.”

“I am sorry,” She apologises, “But it is not on your records. Is it something that happened to you during your fight with Francis Dolarhyde?” She remembers seeing crime scene pictures of the house on the cliff top. She had read about how much blood had been found at the scene; how much of it had been Dolarhyde’s, how much Lecter’s and how much Graham’s. There had been a lot of it from all three of them. But Dolarhyde had lost the most.

Will Graham’s fingers flew to his face, and he traced the line down his cheek.

“Hannibal and Jack threw me back and forth, back and forth for a long time. Inevitably they would drop me and I would shatter. I shattered several times, but I came back together, a little different each time. Hannibal would crack me and put me back together, because I looked too much like Jack’s cup before, and he would fix me to make me more to Hannibal’s choice of design.”

Clarice is surprised, and puzzled by his ambiguous metaphorical explanations, “Are you saying that Hannibal did that to you?”

“Hannibal, Dolarhyde, Jack, Chiyoh, they all left marks. They all took something from me; people or freedom or pieces of my flesh or pieces of my mind. You will have marks on you too by the end. If you don’t shatter first. To people like them, people like you and me are just lambs to the slaughter.”

Something freezes ice cold in Clarice’s chest and she struggles to keep her breath, “What did you say?” She says, and hates that it comes out as not much more than a whisper.

“We are as innocent as lambs, off to the slaughter of greater monsters. Just like I was, like Abigail was,” He says the name sadly, regretfully, and Clarice knows he means Abigail Hobbs, daughter of Garret Jacob Hobbs, self-adopted responsibility of Will Graham, and victim of Hannibal Lecter. “And just like you are. But I am not like that anymore, I found my wrath in the end.”

 _And became one of the monsters, rather than one of the lambs,_ Clarice thinks.

“I am not as fragile as you think,” Clarice remarks hotly, defensively. Her heart is still pounding uncomfortably from his unintentionally too-close-to-home comparison, “I am not a lamb. And I am not some teacup.”

“No, not a teacup,” Graham agrees. He cocks his head and smiles unkindly, “Maybe more of a mug. You are made of sterner stuff going into this than I was, but give it a little time. Even mugs can still crack and shatter and they can still be put back together. Come back to me when you wish to open your eyes and use your ears and use that intelligent mind that Hannibal clearly sees in you. Don’t let their approval smother your talents, Starling, or it will clip your wings. Or maybe you will start to crack and shatter, but that is ok, because then you can come back as somebody else. Anybody else.”

***

That night Clarice dreams of Will Graham with antlers. They sprout up from his curly hair and branch out towards the skies. Starlings start to gather and land on them, but some get stuck on the spiked ends, the way a shrike would impale its prey. Hannibal Lecter is also there, handsomely dressed in black, and he plucks the stuck Starlings down from their branches and eats them whole.

_“Did you catch any bad guys today, Clarice?” Clarice hears her father’s voice ask her._

_“No,” Clarice replies. “I am worried the bad guys are going to catch me instead.”_

***

Freddie Lounds is hanging around the reception area when Clarice and Ardelia arrive at Behavioural Sciences the next morning, take-out coffees clasped in their hands.

Clarice glances at Ardelia and rolls her eyes, and Ardelia smiles apologetically as she abandons Clarice to Freddie, making a hasty retreat to her desk.

“Freddie,” Clarice greets curtly, because she and Freddie are on first-name terms by this point, but not for any positive reason.

Clarice is tired from her disturbed night’s sleep, and had hoped for a quiet moment to drink her coffee and re-energise. She has no patience for Lounds this morning.

“Hi Clarice,” Freddie greets smugly, pen and notebook in her hands. “Do you have anything to comment about the breaking news story this morning?”

“What breaking news story?” Clarice asks, before she can stop herself. She curses herself for it, because undoubtedly Lounds would twist the words into an observation; that one of the FBI’s up-and-coming agents does not know what is happening in the news.

Freddie smiles, like a cat that caught the canary – or the Starling, Clarice thinks wearily – and she taps her pen on the paper, “About the latest Buffalo Bill victim?”

“Jodie Hopkins?” Clarice asks, “What about her?”

Freddie grins wider and shakes her head, “No. I mean Catherine Martin.”

“Who?” Clarice asks.

***

Clarice charges up to Jack’s office with a renewed speed and energy, ignoring the fact that Lounds follows at her heels.

“Sir, why didn’t you tell me?” Clarice asks the moment she reaches Jack’s office and finds him alone.

He knows what she is talking about, because he says, “It has only just been confirmed that it is a possibility,” Jack said, “She was only reported missing yesterday. The connections have only just been made.” He spots Freddie lingering behind her and says, “Good morning, Freddie.” in a way that was not very well-wishing.

“Morning, Jack,” Freddie says. Her phone buzzes, she glances at it with a swipe of her thumb, and says, “You should turn on the news.”

Jack spun in his seat, and turned on the screen hanging on the wall opposite his desk. The three of them turn to watch it.

The reporter was part way through the top story of the morning;

“Catherine Martin, the 25-year-old daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, listed first as a missing, is now believed to have been kidnapped by the serial killer known only as Buffalo Bill. Police indicate that the girls’ blouse has been identified, sliced up the back, in what has become a grim, all-too-familiar calling card. Catherine is the only daughter of Senator Martin, the Republican senator from Tennessee. Her kidnapping is not considered to be politically motivated but it has stirred the government…”

“Christ,” Jack shouts angrily, “I can’t believe they have released the evidence and their theories to the press. I mean what kind of idiotic…the pressure on us is going to increase tenfold…”

“Just moments ago,” The Reporter is saying, once Clarice can hear him again, “Senator Martin recorded a dramatic personal plea…”

The next moment, Senator Ruth Martin is on the screen, giving a direct message to Buffalo Bill;

“I’m speaking now to the person who is holding my daughter,” Senator Martin says, and Clarice can tell that she is using all of her composure learnt from years of politics not to cry. “Catherine is a good person, gentle and kind. Talk to her and you’ll see. You have the power. You are in charge. I know you can feel love and compassion. You have a wonderful chance to show the world that you can be merciful as well as strong, that you’re big enough to treat Catherine better than the world has treated you. You have that power. Please. My daughter is Catherine.”

“That’s smart,” Freddie says from behind Clarice, “She keeps repeating Catherine’s name.”

“If he sees Catherine as a person and not just as an object,” Clarice finds herself agreeing, “He may find it harder to hurt her.”

“Please,” Senator Martin was saying, “Release my little girl…”

Jack turns the television off.

***

_He watches the lady on the television ask him to release her daughter._

_He turns the television off._

_The Senator woman is wrong. He has never been a compassionate man, and the only person he has ever really loved and trusted is himself, which is why he deserves to have this. He deserves his transformation. It is all that he can focus on.  It is more important than compassion and mercy. He has waited too long for this. He is making it happen, and he cannot and will not stop now. He does not care if the girls’ mother tells him of the life the girl had before now, because her life will be his soon, and then he will be living it for her._

_The new girl is loud. She is screaming from downstairs. He ignores her._

_He stands, and goes to check on his moths. He envies them, that one day those caterpillars decide to develop, and become something else, cocoon themselves up and flourish as something bigger and better. They flutter in their cases, though he focuses on the pupa. He is going to be better than these moths, he knows, however, because whilst they can change only the once, he can change again and again and again. He won’t just have one cocoon, he will have many. He can have as many as he wants._

***

“They are going to push us,” Jack says, the moment the television is off, “They are going to want immediate results. The girls has got about three days.” Jack’s gaze falls on Clarice, “They are going to push us to use Hannibal and Will, because they have hinted that they know something.”

“Freddie,” Clarice rounds on Lounds, “I need to know what information you have been supplying to Dr Lecter in your visits to him. There is no point in bending to his demands if it is you that has been giving him the information that he has been able to twist into making it look like he knows more than he does...”

“Woah, woah,” Freddie holds up her hands defensively, “The head of Benjamina Raspail had nothing to do with me. That was all Hannibal. He definitely knows something.”

That much, of course, was true. More so now that the moth has been discovered in Raspail’s head, which proves that there is a connection between the bodies found in the rivers and the one Hannibal had been keeping in his storage unit. Hannibal Lecter knows who Buffalo Bill is, but it is not going to be an easy job prying the information from him.

“What is that you two discuss then?” Jack sounds unamused and accusing. “When you go to see him?”

“We swap stories.”

Jack blinks, “What?”

“I tell him something about me, and he tells me something about his and Will’s escapades around Europe. I am writing a book on their years abroad, because it’s not just Chilton who can turn the relative-misfortune of knowing Lecter and Graham into a money-making scheme. I was the one who coined the term ‘murder husbands’ after all.”

“You do remember what happened to Chilton, right? What Hannibal and Will set him up for?”

“Of course I do, I see Frederick every other week. But I am not goading Hannibal like Frederick did. Hannibal and I have a deal.”

“What do you tell him about you?”

“He likes to play his little psychological games. Asks me about my childhood and picks my nature apart. It doesn’t really faze me. Particularly because I know he is locked up and he isn’t getting out for the rest of his life.” Lounds looks pointedly at Jack, “This time.”

“Have you ever been to see Will?” Clarice asks her.

“I tried once. The less pleasant half of the murder husbands did not care to see me.”

“Freddie,” Clarice says, “Do you think that Lecter will tell us what he knows about Bill if we bend to his demands?”

“That depends on what his demands are.”

“He wants to see Mr Graham.”

“That seems reasonable enough. True love is a hard thing to break, you know,” Freddie says, and she sounds almost wistful.

Clarice thinks about everything Will Graham has said to her about Hannibal Lecter since she met him. What he has said has been more negative than positive in many ways, and she wonders what effect separation could have had on them; could have had on Graham. But then she does not know how they used to be with each other before. She is not about to ask Freddie about it, in case Freddie reports Will’s seeming displeasure with Hannibal back to Hannibal, and ruins Clarice’s chances of getting him to open up about Buffalo Bill.

She waits until Freddie leaves, and Jack is busy answering his sudden incoming of phone calls, before she goes through the _Lecter and Graham_ case file, to find a telephone number, to make a phone call of her own.

The call is answered on the third ring.

“Dr Bloom,” The voice on the other end of the line says.

“Dr Bloom,” Clarice says, “This is Agent Clarice Starling, I work closely with Jack Crawford. I don’t know if you remember me, but we met a couple of years ago.”

“Agent Starling, yes I remember.” There is a moment of silence, before Alana Bloom asks, “Is it Jack? Is he ok?”

“Oh no, it’s not…Jack is fine, thank you. That is not the reason for my call. I was calling to ask for some advice, but if you do not wish to be involved, I will completely understand.”

There is that silence again, a contemplative, considering silence. “What is it regarding, Agent Starling?”

“I know that you do not want to be involved any further in the _Lecter and Graham case_ , Dr Bloom, and for that I am sorry for calling. But I have few people to turn to about this.”

“About what?” Alana Bloom asks, “What else is there left to say on Hannibal and Will? They are both locked up in the Baltimore State Hospital, aren’t they?”

The question sounds rhetorical, but then there is the tense, concerned silence that follows, and Clarice find herself reassuring Dr Bloom that “Yes, they are locked up.”

“And they are staying there,” Bloom finishes. “Jack and I, and you, should have nothing more to do with either of them.”

“Unfortunately,” Clarice corrects with an element of apprehension, “The pair have been in…well, in the spotlight again. They are being consulted about a current case. A case of a serial killer.”

“Oh, you are _joking_ ,” Dr Bloom sounds exasperated and furious in equal measure. “What is Jack thinking? This isn’t the first time Will and Hannibal have helped solved murders from behind bars, you know. And look how those turned out!”

“This time seems to be different,” Clarice says, “They have been surprisingly co-operative so far.”

“Of course they have! They will be playing a game. Hannibal loves playing his silly, dangerous games. Hannibal will be playing you, because that is what he has always done. And then Will learnt to do it, at first because nobody believed him about Hannibal, and then for a cause because he had to deal with Hannibal himself, and then he learnt to do it just because he could, and he could do it with Hannibal as a tutor. His experience has made him very good at it. They may seem like they are co-operating, but it will only be for their own agenda, and they will always be one step ahead.”

“I am aware of their games, I have been made to play them.”

“Wait,” Alana Bloom says, “Are you saying that  _y_ _ou_ are the one who has been dealing with them, and not Jack?”

“Jack hasn’t been to see them. And to be honest with you, he doesn’t know that I am making this call to you.”

“What is he _thinking_?” Dr Bloom hisses again, more to herself than Clarice, it seems. “The situation must be desperate; it is the only reason he would risk going to them again, which means that the serial killer has to be that Buffalo Bill.”

“You are correct about the killer,” Clarice allows, “But Jack did not want to use Lecter and Graham. His colleagues have been applying pressure. Particularly now that it appears that the killer could have once been a patient of Lecter’s.”

“So Hannibal knows who he is?”

“Yes.”

“But I suppose he is not telling you.”

“Not so far.”

“Do not continue to play his games, Clarice. I assume he will have made conditions. What is he wishing to exchange for his information?”

“He wants a meeting with Will. And he wants them both to be moved to institutions away from Dr Chilton.” She does not mention about the possibility that Chilton may be mistreating Will Graham.

“Oh,” Dr Bloom seems surprised, “That isn’t quite as demanding as I had imagined.”

“But that is what I am calling to ask you about,” Clarice says, “I didn’t want to ask Jack, but apart from him, you are the only other person that really knew Hannibal and Will, when they were apart, and when they were together.” She takes a breath, “More and more pressure is going to be put on Jack to make a move to get the information from Lecter, and he will be told to meet Lecter’s demands. Lecter wants to see Graham, but, well, I am not sure whether that would be a good thing for Will Graham.”

There was silence again on the other end of the line. “What do you mean?”

“There has been enforced separation since their imprisonment; they have been kept in separate wings and have not seen each other once in their year of imprisonment. Whilst Lecter has asked after Graham many times, Graham has only asked after Lecter a couple of times, and the only other times he has mentioned him, they have not been particularly positive. I don’t know what Graham was like when you knew him, but with being away from Lecter for so long, he acts differently to how he was when we first caught them, and he seems to possibly be a little more like the man that you might once have known. And I know how you cared for that man. I don’t know whether being put back in Lecter’s company will be good for him, and I don’t know whether he really wants to see him. So my first question is, do you think they should be allowed to meet? The second is whether you think Will Graham could be benefitting from being away from Lecter and Lecter’s influence? Could Graham have been so heavily manipulated by Lecter that he became dependant on him, and now that they are apart that hold is weakening?”

She hears an intake of breath, and a sigh, and then Dr Bloom says, “I do not know how sound and stable Will Graham’s mind is anymore. Before Hannibal he was fragile, after meeting Hannibal he was worse. His empathy caused him social anxiety. He removed himself from social situations and saw himself in the shoes of murderers with an intensity that frightened him. He was so, so afraid that he would become what he helped to hunt down. Jack wanted Will’s help, but I told him not to let Will get too close to it all. But Jack needed Will to get close, and because I refused to ‘study’ Will and play psychiatrist for him, I had to recommend someone else,” She scoffs bitterly, “Which was when I suggested Hannibal. Will was manipulated by Hannibal from day one, and from then on for years. First Hannibal offered friendship, whilst secretly tormenting him to the point of dependency. He then pushed and goaded Will into acting in revenge for Hannibal’s betrayals. He gave Will a glimpse of a family before taking it away again. He played cat and mouse with him and lured him to Europe. He handed himself in when Will told him he did not care where Hannibal went, just so he made sure that Will knew exactly where he was. He waited until Will was settled in a new life with a wife and stepson before dragging him back in again. I told Jack that I would never do a scholarly study of Will whilst he was still alive. But now he is locked up like he is, for the rest of his life, I suppose I can at least offer some advice to you, if even just to ease my conscience a little over how terribly we failed Will...

Is Will susceptible to Hannibal’s manipulation? Of course he is. He always has been. But the Will I knew was petrified of becoming what he is now, to the point of reliance on Hannibal and consequently exacerbating his health issues. By the time he ran off with Hannibal, I personally believe that Will knew exactly what he was doing. It was our faults that we could not save Will at first, up until Hannibal handed himself in. But after that, after that Will was relatively free, or so we thought. Will was the one that had everything he had wanted – a wife and a step-child, a second chance – and he chose to give that life up for Hannibal. Will was the one that made the decision to step over the line into being beyond saving. I have a feeling that your feelings are grounded in pity for him, sympathy for him, and I understand that, I do. There will always be a vulnerability to Will that people find endearing and the need to protect. But there is one thing that you must never, ever do, and that is underestimate him. He sent a killer after Hannibal from inside the hospital he currently inhabits, and he did that of his own free will. He warned Hannibal that the police were coming for him the night that we were supposed to catch him; Jack was stabbed, Will was gutted, Abigail was killed and I…I was told there was a chance I may never walk again. Will left his wife and stepson for Hannibal. He travelled Europe and murdered, and most probably ate, people with him. I have a feeling that no matter how manipulated Will might have been, or still might be, there is always _always_ a significant amount of choice in something like that. And then there was that news story a couple of years ago that Hannibal and Will may have briefly parted ways? If that was a true story, then that means that Will once again must have reunited with Hannibal out of his own choice. I do not know how twisted he is, and what state he is in now, but whether there is residual manipulated-dependency there or not, you cannot trust him either way. If he is playing with you, he may be convincing, but he will be loyal to Hannibal. If he is still under Hannibal's thumb, then he will do the same. Do not trust him with information. Do not pity him to the point of being easily deceived…”

There is a breath, and then Dr Bloom says quietly, “Don’t trust him, but please, be gentle with him. If you think he would benefit from psychiatric help then get him it. I would also recommend keeping him from Hannibal Lecter at all costs, but from the sounds of it, I doubt you will be able to avoid Hannibal getting his way and getting his meeting with Will, if it means the FBI catching Buffalo Bill faster. If you are right, and Will has shown signs of realisation and negative-reflection after being parted from Hannibal for so long, then his progress may slide back if Hannibal is given the chance to dig his claws in again. But you must remember that Will Graham has claws too, and he has teeth. Will was once one of my dearest friends, but I am afraid that I accepted many years ago that I lost him. And it does not matter what is done to and for him now, because either way I have lost him to Hannibal Lecter. We all have.”

“So you think Graham will always remain loyal to Lecter, then?” Clarice summarises, a little disheartened. She had been hoping that maybe Graham had changed for the better due to the separation, but maybe that has been all part of some grand deception? 

“What does Will say and do when you go to see him?”

“He is very poetic, and ambiguous. It’s all metaphors and double-entendres.”

Dr Bloom sounds momentarily amused, and dare Clarice say it, fond, as she says “That does sound like Will. I suppose he has given insights on this killer?”

“Yes.”

“Extraordinarily perceptive insights, I wouldn’t wonder.”

“Yes, they are very perceptive. As are Dr Lecter’s.”

“I suppose they are intrigued by you.” It is not a question.

“Mr Graham seems not to particularly like me, but he thinks Dr Lecter does.”

“And I can tell you are more intrigued by them both than you should be. Hannibal can seem very charming at first. I of all people know what mistakes can be made by being taken in by Hannibal Lecter. You should be careful, Agent Starling. You are the third protégé of Jack Crawford’s to meet Hannibal, and you know very well what happened to both of your predecessors…”

“You are not the first person who has warned me of that.”

“Was one of the people who warned you Will Graham himself?”

“Yes.”

There is another moment of silence, but Clarice thinks she can hear the chatter of a child in the background.

“Then maybe his sanity _is_ returning to him,” Dr Bloom says eventually, “I would suggest that you heed good advice and distance yourself from their case as soon as you possibly can. And try to encourage Jack of the same. Do you find your questions answered?”

“Somewhat,” Clarice says, “Thank you for your time, Dr Bloom.”

She hears Dr Bloom sigh one final time, “I wish you luck, Agent Starling. I wish you luck in catching Buffalo Bill, I wish you luck in dealing with Will Graham, and I wish you luck in surviving Hannibal Lecter. I have warned you, but I also warned Jack, and if you are half as stubborn as he is, I know you will not be so easily counselled. Agent Starling, please do not call me again.”

“You have my word, Dr Bloom. Thank you again.”

“Goodbye, Agent Starling.”

“Goodbye.”

***

“What you are doing, Agent Starling,” Frederick Chilton is not amused, “Is coming into my hospital to conduct yet another interview, without sharing information with me, yet again.”

“Dr Chilton, I told you, this is a routine follow-up on the _Raspail Case_.”

“I don’t believe you,” Dr Chilton side-steps in front of her, “Flattery will not work on me this time. Lecter is my patient, and I have rights.”

“Dr Chilton, if you do not let me pass, I will lodge a formal complaint about the potential case of mistreatment against William Graham. I will make sure that it is thoroughly investigated, at a much faster pace than my superiors have so far acted upon my concerns on the matter.”

“What mistreatment?” Dr Chilton asks, all innocence.

“You think I do not have evidence?” Clarice levels him with a glare, “The follow-up on the _Raspail Case_ is a matter of national urgency. But if you have any issues, please feel free to call my superiors,” Clarice holds up her phone, “Or I can call them now for you, if you like? They could be here in twenty minutes, which I am sure will be enough time for you to sort or destroy any paperwork, CCTV footage, traces of evidence on your patients, that you might not want them to see?”

“Touché, Agent Starling.”

He steps aside.

***

Hannibal Lecter smiles when he sees her. “Hello, Clarice. You know, I was expecting you sooner.”

“Then I apologise for my delay,” She humours him. “You have had company in the meantime, however, I am sure. Freddie Lounds, as you mentioned previously, for example.”

“Yes, Freddie does like to come calling,” Lecter says. He steps closer to the glass, and his gaze is calculatingly pleased, “I much prefer your visits, of course.”

Clarice ignores this.

“I know of your history with Lounds,” She says, “And if I was her I would be getting as far away from you as possible, not stopping by for interviews.” Clarice would not be trading secrets and personal information with this man, if she were Freddie Lounds.

“You may have read about me in a file, but as you say, Freddie Lounds has known us far longer than you. She knows that no matter how fast she runs, and how far, that if we want to find her we will, so she prefers to stay right where she is,” Lecter says this with a casual shrug, as though talk of hunting someone down is a norm, which she supposes it is, to him. “And that is because she also values a news story more than she values her life, which is a little foolhardy, it must be admitted.”

“Alana Bloom knew you both more intimately still,” Clarice dares, her mind still stuck with Dr Bloom and her warnings, “And she has gone.”

Lecter nods, thoughtful, “That is because, ultimately, Alana Bloom is wiser than Freddie Lounds,” He says it with respect. Respect for Alana Bloom. “Alana knows perfectly well that if I wanted to find her, her wife and her son, then I would. If I wanted to kill them, I could. Alas, Will has forbidden it, but Alana does not know this. All she knows is that a fortified and security-protected mansion far far away gives her a far better chance of survival than if she stayed here.”

Clarice thinks about this, “Alana Bloom left, Freddie Lounds stayed.” _And Bedelia is running again,_ she thinks. “But we talk about their decisions as though you ever have a chance at being freed, and you said yourself that you will never be granted freedom. Not ever.”

“Not granted it, no.” Lecter tilts his head. There is something unnatural about it, as usual, presumably intentionally trying to unnerve her. “And you talk about the decisions of Freddie Lounds as though she is a fool to pay us visits,” Lecter smiles. “But here you are.”

“Yes, but as I said, it isn’t like you are going to be getting out of here any time soon.”

“And yet,” Lecter counters softly, “It was you that suggested Freddie should start running. Why would that be, Agent Starling?”

Clarice falters. She does not know why she said what she did about Freddie. Maybe it is because Clarice wants to start running herself. Start running far, far away.

But she does not run. She does what her father would have done. She stands.

“You say you prefer my visits to Freddie’s,” Clarice says tactfully, “But there is a person whose company you desire more than both of ours put together.”

“Will’s,” Lecter does not bother to dance around it. “Yes.”

“You have heard about the latest Buffalo Bill victim?”

Hannibal grins, “I have. Does this mean that you have you been reconsidering my conditions, Clarice?”

Clarice takes a breath, “If you agree to co-operate fully with our hunt for Buffalo Bill, and provide us with truthful information enough to build a profile, we will give you your meeting with Will Graham. If your profile helps us to catch Buffalo Bill in time to save Catherine Martin, the senator promises you a transfer to a more secure facility, far away from Dr Chilton,” She passes the information about the new place of internment through the delivery drawer. “You will find all the information there.”

Hannibal eyes her suspiciously. He walks to the drawer and snatches the papers out.

“The facility is in Oneida, New York,” She summarises, as Lecter reads the papers in his hands, “With a view of the woods nearby. Maximum security would still apply, of course. But you would have access to books, have your drawings returned to you, and given the supplies to create more.”

“Would Will be coming, too?” He asks, without lifting his eyes from their quick, scan-like reading of the papers.

“Will would be transferred as well, yes,” She chooses carefully. She thinks the likelihood of Will Graham being moved to the same institution as Dr Lecter to be very slim. She does not want to make promises that she will not be able to keep, even to serial killers like Hannibal Lecter.

Dr Lecter does not even bat an eyelid at the lack of confirmation. He just pins her with a look and says, “And these are the conditions?”

“Those are the conditions. The meeting with Graham can take place following your agreement to assist on the case and supplying of information,” Clarice says. After all that Dr Bloom had told her, Clarice had questioned the decision to allow Hannibal Lecter his meeting with Will Graham, but her voiced concerns had been steamrolled over by her superiors. She was still reluctant, but there was nothing she could do about it, and she could not deny that even then there was a small part of her that was rather curious to observe an interaction between the pair of them, if only to understand Will Graham’s state of mind concerning Lecter a bit better; whether Graham would respond positively or negatively after being reunited with Lecter after such a long separation. “But the Senator’s offer of transfer to another facility is non-negotiable, and final,” She states clearly, “Meaning that if Catherine Martin dies, that part of the deal is off, and you stay here.”

“Then you have yourself, a deal, Clarice,” he says. “May I keep these?” He waves the papers in his hand.

“You may.”

“Good,” Lecter nods and sets them on his desk.

Clarice takes a copy of the Buffalo Bill case file – sans paperclips and staples – from her bag.

“A copy of the Buffalo Bill case file,” She says, but does not move towards the delivery drawer. “Step away from the drawer, please.”

Dr Lecter holds his hands out in amused supplication, and takes several paces back.

She sends it through.

Lecter plucks it from the drawer.

“I have conditions of my own, of course,” He says carefully, and Clarice blanches.

“You have made your conditions,” She says, trying not to sound angry. “You don’t get to make more if you want our end of the deal to hold up.”

“I will still supply you with the information, Clarice,” Dr Lecter says.

Clarice suddenly realises that he has been calling her by her first name since she arrived. She wants to correct him, but for some reason she doesn’t.

“But I would remind you that I do not know all there is to know about Bill, and I do dislike just serving it all up to you on a platter – excuse my turn of phrase – I require a little more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You said that Freddie Lounds comes to ‘interview’ me. I assume Freddie has told you at some point what it is that she and I discuss? And how we discuss it?”

Clarice knows what he is talking about; he and Lounds swap information, him about his murder-spree around Europe with Will Graham, and her about her past (presumably to satisfy the curiosity Lecter has about the minds of the people around him) in return for that first-hand account. No, Clarice does not want him to know anything else personal about her.

“Quid pro quo,” Lecter says, “I tell you something about the Buffalo Bill case, and you tell me things about yourself in return. Quid pro quo, yes or no?”

“I don’t trust you.”

 Lecter smiles at her, “No, I wouldn’t either if I was you. But as we agreed previously, there is no chance of my being granted freedom. ‘ _Not ever’_ , I believe were your exact choice of words. So who is there for me to tell these things about you? Who will know anything about these things but you and me? In fact, I swear to keep what I know about you to myself as long as I am behind bars…”

“To your grave then,” Clarice comments meanly, because she does not want to give in to his games, but knows she is being given little other choice.

Lecter’s smile falters a little, “Yes, I suppose so. So tell me, yes or no, Clarice? Catherine Martin is waiting and the clock ticks ever onward.”

Clarice knows time is running out on finding Catherine Martin. Once this day ends, Catherine has two days left of life, at most. Clarice needs results and she needs them fast. Despite the fact that she knows that she has nothing particularly thrilling or disreputable in her past for him to find out or unravel, she does not want him prying in her head, because that is how he got Will Graham under his thumb. But as Lecter says, there is no-one else who will know this information but her and him, and he will be keeping it with him behind bars and taking it to the grave. She needs results on the Buffalo Bill case, she needs to show Jack and her superiors that she can handle a high-priority case like this on her own, that she can handle that responsibility.

She takes a breath, “Go on, Doctor.”

Lecter smiles, and it is a rather disconcertingly kind smile. “What is your worst memory of childhood?” he says.

“The death of my father,” She says immediately. It slides easily off her tongue, because it is something that is always present in the back of her mind.

She wonders what Lecter’s worst memory of childhood is. What were his parents like? Did he have siblings? In what kind of a place or situation did someone like this grow up?

“Tell me about the death of your father, Clarice. And please don’t lie to me, I will be able to tell.”

She knows he will. So she is honest. “He was a town marshal. One night he surprised two burglars coming out the back of a drugstore. They shot him.”

“Was he killed outright?”

She frowns at him for the question, “No. He was very strong. He lasted more than a month.” Her words and following breath end on a shake, “My mother died when I was very young, so my father had become the whole world to me, and when he left me, I had nothing. I was ten years old.”

Lecter nods, looking sympathetic, and possibly a little impressed, “You are very frank, Clarice. I thank you for your honesty.” He gestures with his hands, “Quid pro quo. What would you like to know?”

“We found a Death’s Head moth…”

“Acherontia styx,” Lecter amends.

“Acherontia styx,” Clarice allows, “Inside the skull of Benjamina Raspail, and there were moth’s wings in the foot well of the car in your storage unit. The latest victim of Buffalo Bill had a cocoon of the same species deliberately wedged into her throat. None of this has been made known to the public. Did you know about the moths?”

Lecter’s face remains unreadable as he says, “Yes.”

“Why does he place them there?”

“The significance of the moth is change. Caterpillar into chrysalis, or pupa, and then into beauty.”

 _‘Bill is transformative. He is wrapping himself in a cocoon to become something big and beautiful’_ she hears Will Graham say in her head.

“Buffalo Bill wants to change, like the moths," Clarice surmises, "He wants to make himself something else; wrap himself in a cocoon and transform.”

“Very good, Clarice.”

Clarice does not even bother throwing the same accusation at Dr Lecter that she had thrown at Mr Graham; that if he had told them about this sooner, that he could have saved lives. As far as Clarice could tell, Lecter had no conscience. No regrets for anything he has done. She can guess what his reply would be, and she knows it would be eerily similar to Graham’s; _Oh, Clarice,_ she imagines Lecter say, _Where would be the fun in that?_

“But why would he want to transform into something – someone – else, and how does he think that this will help him do that?” She asks instead.

“Ah, ah, Clarice,” Lecter tuts softly, “I think you will find it is my turn. After your father’s murder you were orphaned. Tell me, what happened next?”

Clarice shifts her gaze from his. She takes a breath. “I lived with my mother’s cousin and her husband in Montana. They had a ranch.”

Lecter hums thoughtfully. He seems totally absorbed in what Clarice is telling him. “Was it a cattle ranch?” He asks.

Clarice shakes her head, “No. It was sheep. Sheep and horses.”

“How long did you live there?”

“Two months.”

“Why so briefly?”

“I ran away.”

She looks back at Lecter again, and Lecter is watching her intently, piercingly, with his maroon eyes. “Why was that, Clarice?” He asks, “Was the rancher cruel to you? Did he abuse you?”

“No,” Clarice says, stunned at the insinuation, “No, he was a decent man.” She narrows her eyes, and collects herself, “Quid pro quo, Doctor.”

Lecter gestures for her to continue.

“Buffalo Bill wants to become something else,” She says, “But why and how?”

“I am not going to spell it out for you, Clarice. Believe it or not, I think more of you than that. I will wait for you to come to your own conclusions, and tell you if you are right.”

“He wants to cocoon himself and become something else,” She says, thinking out loud, “But his victims are of different gender, different race. The only thing they share is a similar size, and the fact that different parts of them are skinned.” She thinks through the evidence. She thinks about what Will Graham said to her, what Lecter has said to her, with all their metaphors and poetic insinuations. “He wants to become something else, someone else, but what is it that I am not seeing? What is it that I have overlooked…”

And then it hits her. It hits her hard and then scrapes the air from her chest.

_Many people want to be many things, but I do not know whether it is overrated and overlooked._

_Or maybe you will start to crack and shatter, but that is ok, because then you can come back as somebody else. Anybody else._

_The Minnesota Shrike. He used all parts of the victims, just like he used all the parts of the deer and other animals that he hunted - Just like your Buffalo Bill skins them._

“Oh my god,” Clarice nearly staggers backwards with the realisation that repeats Will Graham’s words back to her, “He doesn’t want to just transform into one person. He wants to be multiple people. The skins he takes…he is using them…”

She remembers all the photographs of the crime scenes and all the different strips of skin taken from all the corpses; almost with a tailors’ eye.

“He is using them to make a suit.” She looks up at Lecter, horrified, to find him grinning at her, sharp teeth glinting. “He is making a cocoon of skin to transform, but because the skin is from a number of different people, he feels like he could transform into any of them…all of them…”

Lecter looks pleased, “As far as I interpret it, yes. What does Will say? Have you asked him?”

Clarice suppresses a shiver, now that she knows that this is exactly what Will Graham had been implying throughout their last conversation.

_You are going to put another murderer in my head, you know that don’t you?_

“He agrees,” She says.

Lecter’s mouth tilts up in a fond smile. “Of course he does.”

“Dr Lecter,” Clarice attempts to draw him back in, “Buffalo Bill, if he wants to become multiple people, does that mean he suffers from some form of multiple personality disorder?”

Lecter shakes his head. “Bill has been a lot of things over his years, I expect. But in the end, he is nothing much more than the usual psychopath. He thinks of reasons with which to murder, causes, if you will, and he believes them, for a while. And then he gets bored, and he moves onto the next project. He obsesses, he cares, he covets. He is not loyal to humans, but his creatures, his moths, I can only deduce that he is loyal to them. Maybe he thinks he is superior to other humans, maybe he thinks he is inferior. It would be terribly interesting to sit down with him.”

“If he did not try to make you into a part of his suit.”

Lecter smiles, narrow and sly self-confidence, “I would like to see him try.”

“Who is he, Doctor?”

“The cuts of skin suggest a tailor’s precision,” Lecter says thoughtfully.

“Dr Lecter, please, I need a name…”

“I will give you a name,” Lecter says, “Once I have seen Will.”

“That is not a part of the deal, Doctor.”

“Actually, Clarice,” Lecter states politely, “I think you will find that it was. You said to me that my meeting with Will would take place following my agreement to assist on the case and the supplying of information. I have agreed to assist on the case, and I have supplied more information to you than you have to me. I have given you plenty to go on…”

Plenty to go on?!

“The deal also is that if Catherine Martin is not found in time that your transfer to the other institution is off,” Clarice points out, trying not to sound too angry, trying not to sound too desperate. “Please, Doctor, for the sake of the view you are risking, give me a name.”

“Catherine Martin has another two days,” Lecter dismisses, “You can organise my meeting with Will for this evening. I know it will not be allowed for us to be put in the same cell, so adjoining cells with bars between will suffice. I would like to sit down to my evening meal with him. You can make this happen, can you not, Clarice?” He asks, and Clarice had not noticed until now how close the pair of them are standing. All that separates them is two paces and a pane of glass. “And then, once I have seen Will, tomorrow morning I will give you the name of Buffalo Bill. Those are my terms. You will not get a name until I have seen Will Graham.”

***

They give the meeting the go-ahead.

Instead of being allowed to help follow up the new leads on Buffalo Bill that Clarice has passed onto her colleagues at the FBI, she has to wait at the Baltimore State Hospital and observe the meeting of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. She is frustrated that she has to spend the evening out of the investigation of the leads, but she is also secretly eager in her anticipation of watching the exchange between Lecter and Graham; even if it does mean that Will Graham's supposed progress away from Lecter is pushed back.

Jack Crawford is with her, and so is Doctor Chilton. They are standing in a room, with screens before them showing CCTV footage of every angle of Lecter and Graham’s meeting cells, waiting for the arrival of the pair of them.

“You have caused me quite the inconvenience, Starling,” Chilton comments, as he comes to stand beside her, hands clasped behind his back.

“Not intentionally, Dr Chilton.”

Chilton scoffs, and it’s a wispy, hissing sound through his reconstructed lips. “Of course it was not your intention. It’s all his intention. Hannibal’s intention.”

“Well,” She shoots back, slightly wounded, “I hope you are ready for Jack and Hannibal Lecter to see your 'good' intentions towards Will Graham.”

“I have said it before, and I will say it again, Clarice,” Chilton says icily, as Will Graham is lead into the meeting room and onto their viewing screens, hands cuffed and face mask covering his mouth like a muzzle on a dog. She stares, and she sees from the corner of her eye as those scarred lips of Chilton’s pull up into a smug smirk, “What mistreatment?”

Clarice moves a step closer to the screen. Will Graham has been cleaned up; his beard reduced to what must only be short stubble, though she can’t quite tell from her view through the cameras, and his hair has been cut to short manageable curls again. He has glasses on. It is a smart, elegant look on him. It was a look much more suited to a suit and tie, rather than an orange jumpsuit. He still looks thin, but he looks better. He looks less savage and destitute. He looks handsome, she realises.

“One of my attendants almost lost a couple of fingers when Will got a bit too, hmm, bitey,” Dr Chilton comments nonchalantly in her ear, “But it was worth it, if only to see the look on your face.”

Will Graham is led into his cell for the evening. There is a table pushed up against the bars of one side that mirror the table in the cell on the other side. The attendants frogmarch Graham to the table, sit him down in the chair by pushing him down by a hand on the shoulder, and then the chains attached to the cuffs on his wrists are looped through a metal ring buried deep into the table, and down to the floor, and reattached to the cuffs, keeping him in place. The mask is kept on.

Clarice glances at Jack, and he is watching with his arms crossed protectively over his chest and a deep frown on his face, his gaze clearly fixed on his old friend’s face. He must feel her eyes on him however, because he glances at her.

“Memories of the first time he was in here,” Jack explains shortly. He looks back at the screens again.

Clarice looks too. She looks at Graham. There is a camera pointing right at his face, zoomed in for close-ups of any conversation, and Graham is staring calmly and blankly ahead, the mask on his mouth cloudily transparent and sinister-looking.

And then the door opens on the other side of the room, and Graham’s eyes immediately and almost-obediently flick up.

Clarice looks to the screen displaying the footage of the camera pointed at the door that leads off in the direction of Lecter’s wing of the hospital. And Hannibal Lecter is standing there, between two orderlies. His attention has already landed, and is entirely focused, on Will Graham. Clarice doubts she has ever seen such single-minded focus.

Lecter looks as well-presented and striking as ever, even in his white jumpsuit and mask, or maybe because of them. He looks pristine. He allows the attendants to lead him into the cell and towards his own table, facing directly opposite to Graham’s. He allows the attendants to fasten him similarly to the table.

Clarice’s gaze jumps to the other screens. She watches Graham watch Lecter, his eyes trailing lethargically over Lecter’s face, seemingly taking everything in, as Graham seems to take everything in; with a sight that is far more powerful than the average human being’s. He keeps his hands to himself, clasped together in front of him on his table. Lecter mirrors his posture.

The attendants bring two plates of food – a steak dinner, at Hannibal’s request and Chilton’s obvious displeasure – placing them on the respective tables, tentatively removing the face masks, and then leaving. They lock the doors of the cells behind them, and then exit the room altogether, to stand guard outside.

Hannibal Lecter visibly moves his jaw from side to side, stretching it after the confines of his mask, before his mouth slides into a wide smile with teeth.

“Hello Will,” He says, softly, his voice is audible through the microphones, but comes out a little fuzzy through the speakers.

And this is what Clarice has been waiting for. She has been waiting to see exactly how Will Graham will react in return, because she honestly has no idea.

Will Graham’s eyes travel again over Lecter’s face. He looks like he is drinking Lecter in and finding nourishment from it, and it is unlike any expression Clarice has ever seen him aim at anybody else.

“Hello Hannibal,” Will Graham says. He smiles.


	4. Chapter 4

Clarice watches Hannibal Lecter appraise Will Graham with his sharp eyes.

“You have lost weight,” Lecter observes.

She watches Will Graham’s smile quirk a little. “That is because I have gone twelve months without your cooking.”

Lecter looks smug, and his gaze fixes momentarily on the nearest camera, before his eyes find Graham again, as if drawn by a magnetic pull. “You miss my cooking?” He asks, and it almost seems for show, because he knows that they are being watched.

Whatever it is for, it makes the intended impact in the observation room. Jack clears his throat, Chilton snorts with distaste, and Clarice’s stomach churns.

“Yes,” Graham says, fiddling with where his handcuffs are anchored to the table.

Lecter reaches out, through the bars, his chains clanking and pulling against them, and he lays his hands over Graham’s.

Graham smiles up him, almost coyly, “You look good,” Graham comments. Clarice sees how Graham’s thumb twitches up to brush Lecter’s hand.

Lecter’s lips tug again at the corner, and his eyes crinkle a little. He looks flattered. “And so do you,” Lecter tells him, “If a little thin.” His eyes move once again over Graham’s face, gaze sharp and all-seeing. “The haircut looks fresh.”

Clarice cuts her gaze to Chilton, who appears unaffected.

“It is,” Graham tells him. “I had visitors.”

Lecter’s eyebrow rises. “Do you get many of them?”

Graham shakes his head, “Not many, other than the orderlies, courtesy of Chilton’s accommodating hospitality.”

“Yes,” Lecter says, tone dry and flat and Clarice thinks that Chilton will have to tread very carefully if he ever comes face-to-face with either Lecter or Graham again. “So I hear.”

Graham shrugs, “Lounds tried to visit once as well and then gave up. I wasn’t very pleasant to her…”

Lecter laughs, “I expected no less of you, darling.”

Graham seems to move with the pet name, his shoulders rolling with it, like a wave has washed over him.

Lecter must pick up on it, because in the next moment, Graham’s hand is being pulled to Lecter’s side of the bars, chains restricting it being dragged too far, and Lecter bends his head to press a kiss Graham’s knuckles.

Graham seems to release a long-held breath, and it looks like a ton of weight has suddenly been removed from his shoulders. He relaxes back in his chair, and Clarice watches him glance at the camera, staring for a moment straight at them, before he looks away almost self-consciously, and his fingers curl around Lecter’s briefly.

“And then there have been Starling’s visits,” Graham says “Most recently.”

Clarice freezes. She stares at the screen, and does not dare to look at Jack, because she knows he is looking at her. She feels that she should be concerned to be the topic of conversation between two of the world’s most notorious serial killers, yet she cannot help but feel a little flattered.

“Ah yes. Agent Starling,” Lecter says, releasing Graham’s hand and Graham retracts it back through the bars. “I have had a few visits from her myself.”

“I can imagine you have been popular, in the last year,” Graham says, plucking at his plastic knife and fork, but not actually picking them up.

Lecter looks fond again, “That is because I am relatively tolerating of their visits, Will. You are more hostile than hospitable.”

Graham pins Lecter with a look, “You like that about me.”

“I do indeed,” Lecter looks, for want of a better word, love-struck, and Clarice finds herself endeared by it despite herself. “We must start our food soon, lest it go any colder than it already is.”

“Ungrateful little…” Clarice hears Chilton mutter beside her.

Graham is obediently picking up his knife and fork. “You have missed me, then?” Graham asks.

“Of course I have,” Lecter says, matter of fact, mirroring Graham’s movement and picking up his own. “You thought that I wouldn’t?”

Graham appears to suddenly be paying a lot of attention to his steak as he saws at it with the unsurprisingly ineffectual plastic knife. “I have missed you too,” He admits awkwardly, without looking at Lecter.

Lecter smiles to himself, and starts cutting up his own meal. “Separation has been tried and tested,” Lecter says, “Verdict?”

“Tests have come back negative. Cannot survive it,” Graham’s eyebrow quirks in a way that Clarice has not seen before; possibly because it is a gesture of amusement, or possibly because this is the first time that Graham’s forehead hasn’t been hidden by a cascade of brown curls.

Lecter grins, but sighs, “Twelve months. It has been too long, Will.”

“And yet we still have the rest of our lives,” Graham comments distractedly, sawing a little more violently at his steak.

“Very true,” Lecter answers thoughtfully. He pops the first square of his steak in his mouth, frowns with assumed dissatisfaction and chews. He swallows, and observes Graham’s attempts to cut his own steak.

“Are you having difficulties, darling?”

“It’s too well done,” Graham grumbles, and the camera’s microphones only just pick it up.

“Then you should have specified rare, Will. I asked for rare. Apparently I am not allowed it blue and bloody, they thought it might indulge my...” Lecter’s grin shows the teeth of the cannibal, “Personal tastes. This appears to be a little more medium-rare for my liking. Yours must be well done.” Lecter carves another piece from his steak with his plastic knife with apparent ease, and Clarice wonders how on earth he manages it with so much finesse. Clarice knows if she tried to cut a steak with a plastic knife, she would look a lot like Graham; positively hacking at it. “Here,” Lecter rolls his eyes and lifts his fork, holding it out and through the bars, towards Graham.

Graham’s tongue makes a slow journey across his lower lip, and he leans forwards.

Clarice watches how Lecter’s eyes focus, transfixed, on Graham’s mouth.

Graham opens his mouth obediently, and takes the piece of steak on the end of Lecter’s fork between his teeth, and pulls it off the plastic prongs slowly. He chews thoughtfully, drawing back, his eyes very telling of his satisfaction towards Lecter’s reaction to him.

Graham chews deliberately, slowly, and the gaze between the pair of them does not waver.

“You are right,” Graham says, once he swallows, “I should have asked for rare.”

Lecter smiles, amused, and cuts a piece of his steak off for himself and eats it. He sighs again, “It makes me miss my own kitchen.”

“And your own ingredients?” Graham’s lips slant upward on one side, as he prods and nibbles at random pieces of potato and carrot.

“Most definitely,” Lecter says. He is watching Graham closely again. “Do you?”

“Miss the ingredients?” Graham asks, and once Lecter nods in clarification, Graham pauses thoughtfully. He had left the plastic knife stuck haphazardly – and almost brutally – in the top of his slab of steak. “Of course.”

Clarice takes that as admission that Graham has definitely been converted to cannibalism. They had thought as much, but had never had certain clarification either way. They had had plenty of evidence to confirm Will Graham to be a murderer, but not a cannibal.

She glances at Jack. His eyes are fixed on the screens as devotedly as Lecter and Graham are staring at each other.

“It is not all that I miss,” Graham says. He tugs the plastic knife out of his steak and attempts to saw at it again. He is more successful this time. Graham does not elaborate what else it is he misses, because Lecter seems to know, so he does not reply.

Lecter watches him thoughtfully, eating another piece of steak, before he asks, “What do you know of Buffalo Bill, Will?”

Graham’s eyes drift and catch on one of the cameras again, and for a moment he is looking right at Clarice without knowing it. Or maybe he does know.

“I only know what Starling has told me and what I have seen in the pictures of a crime scene in a certain storage facility.”

“Ah, yes,” Lecter says, “Sorry for not informing you of that.”

Graham shrugs, “I didn’t particularly need to know about it, did I? I could read it just fine through the photographs.”

“And did you read my motives for keeping it as I found it?”

“You did it out of interest,” Graham answers simply, “And because you thought it would one day become of use to you. I know you, Hannibal. You did the same to me, if you recall.”

Lecter looks amused, “Despite, of course, the fact that you aren’t a beheaded corpse.”

“There was that time that you nearly cut the top of my skull off,” Graham reminds Lecter idly, “Does that count?”

Clarice waits with bated breath. Every time Graham has spoken to her about the terrible things Lecter did to him in the past, it has been with residual bitterness, bubbling away under his words, under his skin, hiding within every scar that was related to Lecter’s fault. She does not know  what to believe; the jest Graham is making to Lecter, or the pointed and slightly accusatory way he delivers it.

Clarice knows then that Will Graham is playing a game with either her or Lecter. Either he is lying to her about his underlying anger toward Lecter, or he is playing down that anger to Lecter. If Graham is playing Lecter, it will have been a long, long game to have played, so Clarice can only assume that the one who has been lied to is her. Whilst that should not particularly surprise her, the alternative is Graham talking light-heartedly about Lecter cutting into his skin and skull, and that disturbs her.

Lecter cocks his head, “No. It does not. You know what that was about, and it was for something else entirely.”

Clarice is surprised when Graham’s eyebrow quirks, and he smirks that clever, sinister smirk of his. “You admire my brain.”

Lecter rolls his eyes, but does not disagree, as he cuts another square of steak and lifts it upwards with his fork. Although Graham is well into eating his own steak, he leans forward and takes the meat off the end of the fork without question.

Lecter is watching him. “And what does that unique mind of yours make of Buffalo Bill?”

“He is enjoying his current project. He will keep killing until it’s done. And then he will find a new obsession, a new project, and start work on the next thing.”

“You think he will not be satisfied with his current project of transformation?”

Graham shakes his head, “He will be satisfied for a while but he will grow bored. Like you and I grow bored in here, untested for a year, until this case came along.”

“We may not be in this particular location for much longer, Will,” Lecter tells him, “Not if I co-operate in giving them the name of Buffalo Bill.”

“I was right then,” Graham says curiously, chewing another piece of steak and speaking around it.

Lecter’s lip curls fractionally, “Manners, William.”

Graham smiles sheepishly, “Sorry.” He swallows and continues with what he was going to say; “From the Benjamina Raspail body I assumed you knew who Bill was, and I was right,” He says again, “You do know him.”

“I know what his name used to be. I do not know where to find him.”

“Have you given them his name?”

Clarice wants to be excited with the turn of the conversation, but she knows that the pair of them will selectively choose what they do or do not say; Clarice and Jack will not hear a single thing that Lecter and Graham do not want them to hear.

“I am not doing their work for them,” Lecter snorts, “Though I am told that if I co-operate before this new girl is killed and found washed up in the river, then they will move us elsewhere.”

Graham does not look enthusiastic about the news. He frowns. “They will split us up Hannibal, now that they have a chance. You know that don’t you?”

“Starling tried to flutter around the subject but I was not deceived,” Lecter says, “I know they will separate us if they can.”

“It is almost time, then,” Graham sighs heavily, “I knew this day would come. I have been waiting for it to happen.”

“I am surprised it did not come along sooner,” Lecter admits.

“Stubbornness in the victory won on the part of the victors, I suppose,” Graham says. “They wanted to keep us here.”

Lecter nods in agreement, “It meant that they knew where we were. Chilton was having his fun. But I think he understands now that this triumph, his inmates being key in the bringing down of a serial killer, and saving the life of a girl, and all that will follow her, he knows the heroes it will make of them; of Jack and Clarice and him. I think he would be willing to give us up at his institution if it means being the means of catching Bill.”

Chilton is stone faced beside her, but Clarice can almost hear his mind turning over Lecter’s words.

Graham leans forwards on his elbows, “Stubbornness is a game that can be played from both sides, you know. Why don’t you just _not_ give them the name? Let the girl die. We stay here.” Graham shrugs, “Simple.”

Clarice hears Jack’s teeth grind together even from where she is standing. It must be awful for Jack, she thinks, hearing a man who would once endanger himself to ensure the safety of others now be so dismissive of another person’s life.

“They want to save this girl, Will,” Lecter explains, indifferent and unsympathetic in the way that he says it. He delicately eats a carrot, makes a face, chews, swallows, and says “She’s a senator’s daughter.”

“Ah. Someone of import.”

“I suppose so. Just as you are someone of import to me. If we do not help them, I can imagine that they will punish us by never letting us meet like this again, and you would still be under Chilton’s roof, and I do not wish that for you. You mean too much to me to allow that to happen.”

“I know that,” Graham says quietly, “But having you in another institute, in another state, I would never see you again, either.” He frowns, “Thrown under the bus to save the day, sounds familiar.”

“Some would say that we don’t deserve the right to be pulled back from said bus. Myself in particular.”

There had been calls for Lecter to be given the death penalty when they had first been sentenced to life imprisonment. Clarice remembers the uproar about it all too well. 

“I was always thrown under the bus by the FBI,” Graham dismisses, “Nothing ever changes.”

“No, some things do not change.” Lecter agrees slowly, “Like Jack Crawford joining us for dinner.”

Clarice freezes, glances at Jack’s rigid profile.

“It’s been some time since we have had a meal with Jack in attendance, no?” Lecter continues, “It could be just like old times.” Lecter’s gaze fixes on the camera, and stares into Jack’s eyes. Jack stares right back at the screen. “If only he came downstairs to sit at the table.”

“Last time he was sitting at a table with us he had to watch you start to cut the top of my head off.”

“You do enjoy bringing that one up, Will, don't you? And as I said previously, we have established why I did that.”

“Not with him we didn’t.”

‘We’; the possessive, collective use of the word seems strange coming from Graham’s mouth. He has used it before, but the use of it now sounds so casual, with such normality of use as a couple, and even though Clarice knows Lecter and Graham have been lovers for years, such normal things seem abnormal when applied to them.

Lecter frowns. “Still, it is a little rude that he does not join us after all the information we have served up to him on a plate this week.”

Jack’s jaw is working. Clarice knows that Lecter wants a rise from Jack, and whilst it is working, Lecter’s assumed aim to make Jack break and speak to them, or go to them to explain himself, will not succeed. Jack has played this game too long. He knows the rules.

“Technically in this scenario we are his and Chilton’s guests,” Graham reminds him, “They are not ours. This is Chilton’s house, and if Jack chooses not to join us then we can forgive him.”

“You forgive too easily. They are, quite frankly, being incredibly poor hosts. Jack used to be a gracious host. I wonder what changed.”

“You left them all in the dust. Maybe their food still tastes a little less succulent, a little less delicious, since eating your food, and they cannot bear to admit it.”

Lecter looks thoughtful. “Maybe.” He looks up at the camera again. “No word from you Jack? No words for old friends? A whole year and not one visit? Not even one for Will?”

“He hates me now,” Graham explains, “He pushed me and he broke me, just as he gave me chances and I broke them. I betrayed him, in the end.”

“I don’t hate you, Will,” Jack says, not to Will, but to the image of him on the screen. Clarice does not know if Jack means to speak it aloud in her and Chilton's presence. “I tried, but I can’t. Not when I failed you like I did.”

“He failed me,” Graham says, as though he could hear the words anyway, “And he feels responsible for what I have become. But he cannot take the credit.”

“I can,” Lecter says, proudly, “And you can.”

Graham nods. Their plates are clean. “He hates me because I am the prime example of what he pushed into danger and then could not save. He will not speak to us, Hannibal. He did not even come to us for the information on Buffalo Bill, what makes you think he will speak to us now?”

 “True. He sent his little Starling to do his bidding. Clarice is stretching her wings as you stretched yours.”

“You are comparing us?” Graham’s expression is unreadable, “And ‘Clarice’?” His lip curls at the use of her forename. Clarice thinks her name sounds strange on Graham’s tongue, having never heard it singularly before, whereas, she realises, she has quickly become accustomed to it on Lecter’s. “First name basis, then? Have you found another interest, Hannibal?” Graham asks, and he sounds displeased, and possibly even jealous. “Another curiosity?”

“You are incomparable, my darling,” Lecter assures, hands reaching out with speed to snag Graham’s own through the bars, “But you cannot deny that she is interesting.”

“If you say so,” Graham sniffs, unimpressed, and Clarice cannot help but feel slightly wounded, even though she knows all too well Graham’s opinion of her; he has more than once expressed his disinterest.

She does not know why she even wants these serial killers to find her interesting. She shouldn’t. She really shouldn't. But she has worked their case for so long, and something inside of her likes the respect that Lecter bestows. So she shouldn’t, but she does.

“Hands are interesting things,” Graham says quietly, distractedly, a blatant change of topic. He inspects his and Lecter's joined hands as he says it.

“How so?”

“Fragile bones that we rely on for so much. Yet they can be crushed easily when the right pressure is applied. Like a baby bird.”

Goosebumps crawl with a slow chill up Clarice’s arms.

“Everything can be broken,” Lecter tells Graham conversationally, “Fingers, bones, birds, people, just like you were…all creatures really, as you well know; those that are great and those that are small. Friendships can be broken, and promises, deals, rules. Some things as strong as an antler and others as fragile as a teacup. Breaking things is easy if you possess the wish to break them, and if you know how to do it. You can bring them down, make them bleed. And then, if you really wish, you can burn them down to the ground. To their very bones.”

The barb clearly hits its mark, as there is movement to her left, as Chilton leans forwards as far as his fire-ruined body will allow and presses the button to his own microphone. “Dinnertime is over,” Chilton orders coldly, angrily, his voice ringing around the room Lecter and Graham sit in.

“So you _are_ here, Chilton,” Lecter smirks with triumph at the nearest camera, “I hope you have been listening closely. And if you wouldn’t mind waiting just a moment, we have not yet said our farewells.”

Lecter suddenly pulls Graham in close by the hands, until Graham’s face is practically touching the bars, and Lecter moves to mirror him. Clarice can see Lecter’s lips move as he whispers something to Graham, but the camera microphones do not pick it up.

Chilton is on his radio to his employees instantly. “Separate them now!”

Clarice watches with rapt attention as Graham tugs Lecter in further, until their lips meet, and Clarice hears the clink of Graham’s glasses as their faces press into the cold metal bars that separate them.

“I have missed the taste of you,” Lecter says, audibly, as their lips part as the doors at either end of the room fly open and the orderlies enter. “And I will miss you, Will. I always do.”

 “You are going to help them, aren’t you?” Graham asks urgently, “You are going to give them the name?”

“They will give me no other choice.”

“They will separate us.”

“Then do what you do best,” Lecter advises, “And survive.”

“I will see you again,” Graham promises, as orderlies advance with masks and tasers at the ready.

“You will,” Lecter vows in return, “Minds are powerful things, as is devotion.”

Graham smiles, “Which do you prefer?”

“You have both, and have both from me,” Lecter manages to say before the mask is tied back over his face. His hands are still holding Graham’s.

“Before you and after you. There is nothing else,” is what Graham says, before his own mask muzzles him.

There is commotion then, as Lecter’s hands leave Graham’s suddenly and strike back at one of the orderlies. There is a crunch of bones as fingers are crushed as easily as Lecter said that they could, and the orderly is screaming. Chilton is yelling beside her into his radio. Jack stands in grim silence. Hannibal Lecter’s eyes gleam over the top of his mask. There is a sound then that joins the screaming, and it takes Clarice a moment to realise that it is the sound of Will Graham’s laughter, muffled behind the mask.

***

Lecter is put in lockdown for several hours. They need the name, but Chilton demands that the rules of his institution have to remain in place, and that they can wait a few hours more.

“Lecter won’t talk for a few hours anyway,” Chilton informs them, “He will be riding the high of his little victory and he won’t want to speak to you whilst he still revels in the sound of bones splintering. I know, because he has done it before.”

Jack sighs in frustration, and Clarice says with no small amount of exasperation “Then can we speak to Graham in the meantime?”

“Why would you want to speak to Will?" Chilton frowns suspiciously, "It’s Lecter we have done all this for.”

“I have some questions for him,” Clarice looks to Jack, “Sir?”

Jack shrugs distractedly, years and years away, “If you wish, Starling.”

“Do you want to come?”

“Pardon?” Jack asks, before he seems to register what she has asked and he shakes his head, “No, no I won’t.”

So Clarice goes to see Graham alone.

He is sitting cross legged on his bed, in a pose of faux-meditation, faux, because Clarice supposes that a man whose mind is as truly muddled, tested, broken and twisted as Will Graham, does not believe in the powers of meditative reflection. It’s too much like sleeping; dreams and drifting consciousness are where the monsters find you. She knows that too. She has experienced it.

His eyes are closed, but she knows that he knows she is there. His glasses are gone, but the mask is off. If he laughs at her now, like he laughed at Lecter breaking the orderly’s fingers, it won’t be muffled behind a mask.

“Jack still will not come to see me,” Graham says, barely even cracking an eye open and already knowing that his old friend is not present, “So I get the Starling instead.”

“I came of my own will, Jack didn’t send me.”

“Is that supposed to intrigue me?” He does open his eyes a little now, squints at her across the cell.

“No. I’m here because I’m intrigued by _you_.”

A slow smile graces Graham’s face, and it is smug in a way that Lecter has clearly nurtured. “And why do I intrigue you?”

“You intrigue me,” Clarice starts coldly, “Because during our previous conversations you made out that you resented Dr Lecter for what he had done to you. You acted like you did not want to see him. And yet today, I saw a different display entirely. You intrigue me because you are obviously playing somebody here, and I am not foolish enough to believe that I am not that person. I saw the love in your eyes when you looked at him. I just don’t understand what you have to gain from pretending to be one thing or another. You were right, that day when you said that I saw you like the main character of a tragic story that I had merely been a reader of. I had heard your story from friends, I had heard your story from strangers, I had read the cold hard facts in a case file and all of them paint a different version of you. I know that you once struggled with being an empath, reading into so many people, constantly seeing things, other people; in a state of flux. But I do not think you are like that anymore. I think you are far more grounded after your years with Lecter than you let on.”

“I think you think too much into it. I love Hannibal, but I resented him long before I realised that I loved him.” Graham swings his legs off the edge of the bed, and stands up smoothly. He gazes at the glass between them, rather than into Clarice’s eyes, “Sometimes I want to rip the heart right out of his chest,” Graham says, softly, “But then I remember that his is the heart that loves me. So I stop.” He meets her eyes then, severe, “I am not pretending. I am myself. There is no point pretending to be something else, when, as you say, everyone sees you as something different anyway. But that also means that sometimes I cannot help but appear as others see me. Hannibal sees me as the man he loves, and finally I understood that I felt the same in return. Jack used to see me as the fragile answer to the dangerous, unanswered questions and I made myself a martyr to the cause. You see me as the victim, and so I cannot help but oblige, in many ways.”

Clarice is beginning to truly understand how Lecter and Graham work as a pair; where Hannibal Lecter is the pillar, the leader, strong and bold and unstoppable, Will Graham is his shadow, ever changing in form and direction, but always connected to Lecter.

“And, of course,” Graham continues, in that omniscient way of his, “We must remember that you are no longer just a reader of the story. You are a character now. But what does that make you, Starling? Does it make you the hero? Am I a victim, or a villain? Surely Buffalo Bill is the main antagonist to your current chapter, so does that therefore make me the character whose neither good nor evil and something misunderstood in-between? Jack is surely the mentor character…” Graham trails off, pauses, and then asks with low, dark accusation, “Who is the love interest? Is it one of the villains that catches the heroes eye? Is it the mystical being of dark dreams and darker desires? A Doctor with a taste for human blood?”

Clarice blanches when she realises what he is implying. “I have only a professional interest in Dr Lecter.”

“Do you?” Graham asks faux-jovial, and does not seem convinced.

Clarice wonders just how it has come to this, to her seeing yet another side to Will Graham; the jealous side, of all things.

“Yes," She says firmly, "And my visits to him will cease the moment that he provides the name of Buffalo Bill and once Bill is caught once and for all.”

“And your visits to me will also cease?”

“Yes.”

“How unfortunate,” Graham says, laces the sarcasm on overly thick. “Not that you would have a choice in the matter, anyway. They are going to move me and Hannibal away from Baltimore once Hannibal helps them. So no more visits for you after that.”

“Not for me,” Clarice agrees, and then adds, just because she feels spiteful, “And no more for you either. You will both be moved from this institution, but it is unlikely that you will be moved to the same place.”

“I won’t be with him anymore, is what you are saying?”

“Yes, that is what I am saying.”

Graham clicks his tongue, “Don’t be so sure.” He offers her a small, private smile, which isn’t like any smile she has seen from him before, “I see him every day. In here,” He jabs a finger against his head, amongst freshly cut hair, “I go to the shared spaces in our minds, and he joins me there. It is just us and rooms full of memories. There are many more happy ones than there used to be, now.” He looks wistful, lost in some of those memories that inhabit the rooms of his unique mind, “The rooms that we share and occupy are fashioned like rooms we have seen from all over the world. I like spending time there. It is better than staying in here.” He looks at her then, the moment broken, “That is how I escape here. I visit him there. And, Clarice Starling, I will also escape here just the same when he leaves this place. I do not need to be right at his side to be able to be with him. I will always find him, no matter where he goes.”

She realises that it is true devotion that she sees in Graham’s eyes. Pure devotion for Hannibal Lecter. After seeing Lecter and Graham’s meeting that evening - seeing in person the two of them interact for the first time - she realises that regardless of whether Graham’s long-lasting resentment towards Lecter’s wrongdoings is an act or not, it does not really matter, because either way, Graham is in love with Lecter, as Lecter is in love with him. No attempts of Graham to deceive her will convince her otherwise from now on, particularly as his last words - that his happy place exists in the rooms in his head where Hannibal Lecter resides – confirm it in every single way. She wonders whether this is the first time Graham has been truly honest whilst speaking to her, other than the time that he looked at the Raspail crime scene photographs and told Clarice, with extraordinary ability, the thoughts and feelings of the murderer responsible.

She remembers fragments of what Dr Bloom had said to her on the phone;

_‘There will always be a vulnerability to Will that people find endearing and the need to protect. But there is one thing that you must never, ever do, and that is underestimate him…If he is playing with you, he may be convincing, but he will be loyal to Hannibal. If he is still under Hannibal's thumb, then he will do the same. Do not trust him with information. Do not pity him to the point of being easily deceived…it does not matter what is done to and for him now, because either way I have lost him to Hannibal Lecter. We all have.’_

“Is he the only person that resides in those rooms?” She cannot help but ask. She has followed Will Graham’s story for years, and she cannot help but be curious.

Graham shakes his head, “There are others. Sometimes I ignore then, sometimes I don’t. Hannibal doesn’t see them though. Hannibal doesn’t see anyone but me.”

She does not know if that is a pointed commented or not. She chooses to ignore it as Will Graham apparently sometimes chooses to ignore the ghosts in his head.

“You are the reason that Jack made Chilton organise mine and Hannibal’s meeting,” Graham says, with a quiet, reluctant acknowledgment, “So, I just wanted to thank you, and to let you know that I appreciate it.”

“It was not a favour to you. I did it because it was Dr Lecter’s condition in giving us the name of Buffalo Bill.”

“Well it was a favour to me regardless. We all got out of that meeting something that we wanted,” He smiles like he knows something, “I am still amazed that you managed to get Chilton to co-operate. In fact, I almost respect you for it.”

“Again, I did not do it to gain your appreciation, nor your respect.”

“Not mine, maybe,” Graham agrees. His knowing smile increases, “But you want Hannibal’s.”

It is said as statement, not as fact.

Clarice is losing her patience.

Not because Graham is winding her up, but because he is correct in the fact that she wants Lecter appeased, she wants Lecter to like her, because it will mean that he gives her the information she wants so she can help save Catherine Martin before it is too late. Clarice tells herself that she wants Lecter’s respect so that she can save the girl, and for no other reason.

That is what she tells herself.

She checks her watch.

“Let’s call it a day, Mr Graham.”

“Oh, you’re leaving so soon?” Again, Graham’s voice drips that sarcasm that she is beginning to find a little grating.

She rolls her eyes fiercely. “It is lock down soon. Lights out,” She tells him, unable to avoid an admittedly unprofessional mockery of his situation, and points at the light above her head.

Graham glances up at the light and back down to her. He does not look offended in the slightest.

“May I ask you one more question before you go, Starling?”

The sudden politeness surprises her, so she agrees.

“How does the story end?” He asks. He isn’t smiling now. He looks serious. He sounds serious.

“It ends with the capture of Buffalo Bill, and you and Lecter far away from the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”

“I cannot argue with that ending. It seems very likely at this point,” Graham agrees, “But what about the journey to get there? Can the hero trust others not to turn on them and attempt to become the hero themselves? Can you trust the villain not to have a trick or two up his sleeve? Watch out for Bill, Clarice, he could be anybody, he could be everybody.”

She does not know what he is trying to imply by his questioning of the ‘heroes’ in the story, because, to be quite honest, the story is so long now that they have all played a number of roles. Graham has been both, Lecter has pretended to be one whilst firmly being the other, and in his own ways Jack has been both, in the eyes of others. Chilton has been all three a victim, a hero and a villain, some more or less than others. Clarice hopes that she is a hero, and that she does not become so tied up in Lecter and Graham’s story that she sees herself becoming a villain, like Bedelia Du Maurier did. She does not really know what Graham is implying, because Graham loves his ambiguity, so she leaves it alone for now. She will ponder over it and any hidden meanings later.

“Not for long. We will have a name from Dr Lecter by the end of the night.”

“You might,” Graham agrees, “You might not.”

As she turns to leave, Graham calls after her, “This may be the last time you see me, Starling. If Hannibal gives you the name, I may be gone, moved on, when you next return here.”

She pauses, she turns back to him. There is something that she has wanted to say to him from the moment that she met him, and this may be the last chance that she has to say it.

“I came into your story part-way through Will Graham,” She says, “I helped to hunt you across Europe, I helped to catch you. You caused a lot of people a lot of grief, but despite that, I cannot deny that it has been an honour to meet you at last,” She finds herself admitting, and meaning it. “I think that the Will Graham that once worked with the FBI was a great man.”

Will Graham looks surprised at her admission. He cocks his head slightly to one side, like Dr Lecter is want to do. “And the man that stands before you now? A disappointment?”

“Still a great man,” She says, because it cannot be denied that he is extraordinary. “It is just that he took a turn onto the wrong path.”

_Or he was dragged onto it, bleeding and screaming._

“You know what they say about paving with good intentions,” Graham says.

“That it’s a little cliché?” Clarice responds.

Graham grins in acknowledgement, “But still holds a lot of truth, Clarice Starling. You watch your good intentions, and the ‘good’ intentions of those around you. Vipers wish to grasp at your ankles and pull you under. Will you let them?”

 _No._ Clarice thinks. _Not like you did._

***

_There are reasons he cherishes animals – his moths and his little puppy dog – more than he does humans. Animals are far more likeable than humans._

_The new one is still screaming._

_He wonders whether she will even be worth adding to his cocoon of colours. Does he really want to become (in part) this bawling, disobedient blonde woman?_

_“It rubs the lotion on its skin,” He tells her once again, sterner this time, as he watches her from the top of the pit that she is currently cowering at the bottom of, “It does this whenever it’s told.”_

_The lotion is in the basket that he has lowered into the pit. It dangles in front of her face, but she does not take it. She glares up at him, covered in snot and tears and looking incredibly grotesque._

_Does he really want to become this one?_

_“Mister,” Catherine – no! the girl, or ‘it’, ‘it’ allows him to disassociate her as human, and merely a piece to the puzzle he is eager to complete – says. “My family will pay whatever ransom you’re asking for. They’ll pay it.”_

_He does not care for her parent’s money. He cares about her skin being kept soft enough that it sews neatly into his suit._

_“It rubs the lotion on its skin,” He demands, “Or else it gets the hose again.”_

_He has hosed her once already. So long as she keeps putting the lotion on her skin she won’t get it again._

_Precious is snuffling, curious at his feet. He stoops to pet the dog’s head. “Yes Precious,” He says, “It will. It will get the hose.”_

_The girl sniffs loudly and succumbs, “Ok, ok.”_

_He grins, triumphant, and swings the basket towards her to make her hurry up and take it out._

_“Mister,” The girl says again, as she finally does as she is told, “If you let me go, I won’t press charges, I promise. See, my mom is a real important woman. I guess you already know that…” And she carries on, garbling alternatives, trying to make him change his mind._

_She thinks he has kidnapped her because her mother is important. She thinks he is after the ransom. She does not realise that she is in fact going to become a part of something truly special, truly beautiful._

_He isn’t going to change his mind. She might not be the most desirable addition to his collection right now, but she is pretty enough, and has curly blonde hair, and her skin will be soft if she does as she is told and applies the lotion when he says so. He can make her quiet when he becomes her. When he is her, he will be quiet and contemplative and not talk so fucking much. And he will apply his lotion like he is supposed to._

_“Now,” He says once she is done, “It places the lotion in the basket.”_

_“No,” She begs, “Please! Please! I wanna go home, please!”_

_“It places the lotion in the basket.”_

_She starts to cry again. She looks ugly when she cries. When he is her, he will be pretty when he cries._

_“I wanna see my Mommy!” She cries, begs, “Please I wanna see my Mommy…”_

_“Put the fucking lotion in the basket!” He shouts, loses his temper._

_When he is her, he won’t have to lose his temper. Animals are far more likeable than individual humans, yes, but he is going to be more than one human, so he will be better, stronger than anyone else. When he is her and them and all the others, he can be however, whoever he wants to be._

***

Dr Chilton declares that they still have a couple of hours before Lecter will be willing to speak to anybody. Clarice and Jack do not have hours to spare waiting, and so they go to find Zeller and Price for any updates on Buffalo Bill. They will return to the hospital later in the evening, after lights out and lock down, to find out what Hannibal Lecter has to say.

She is impatient to find out the name, even though she has creeping doubts that Lecter has been playing them all along and does not know, or else will give them a false name to keep them floundering. Jack knows she is impatient, but tells her that they can afford a couple of hours.

As it turns out, that couple of hours costs them dearly.

Jack receives a phone call just over an hour later.

Clarice, Price and Zeller watch as Jack’s face twists, a look of pure fury passing over it, before dread descends.

Clarice gets the sinking feeling in her stomach that informs her that something must have gone wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.

She has never known Price and Zeller be so still and silent. She feels Zeller tense beside her.

Jack ends the call and spins on his heels, storming towards them.

“Jack?” Price prods.

“Chilton,” Jack snarls. “The damn idiot.”

“Why?” Zeller asks urgently, “What has he done?”

“He has taken Hannibal.”

Price and Zeller’s mouths drop open simultaneously.

Clarice is totally bewildered. “Taken him where?”

“According to one of his orderlies, Chilton has had the cell besides Hannibal’s bugged since the inmate, Miggs, died. It means that Chilton has heard everything; all of Clarice’s negotiations with Hannibal. Chilton called Senator Martin and asked her about the deal she sanctioned which we offered to Hannibal, that if he gave us the name of Buffalo Bill that Hannibal and Will would moved to different institutions…”

“And?” Clarice does not see how that is a problem.

“The deal wasn't real!" Jack shouts, "There was no real deal made between us and Martin!”

Clarice stares at her mentor with shock, “What?”

“We hadn’t informed her. It was a ruse to get Hannibal to comply, with the view of getting her co-operation afterwards. Once he knew that Martin had no idea what he was talking about, Chilton went to Hannibal and told him that there never had been a deal with Senator Martin, and that Hannibal was being scammed.”

“But Lecter _was_ being scammed!” Clarice argues, angry, angry that once again she had been sent in to meet Dr Hannibal Lecter without the necessary information, under false pretences, not trusted with the truth, and made to look like the one doing the manipulation. “How were you supposed to trust Lecter to give us an honest answer about Bill when there was no real deal on our side in the first place?”

Jack sighs, expression grim, “Look, Clarice, I am sorry. It was not my decision.”

 _It never is. And yet it always is._ She wants to bite back, but she doesn’t. She can’t. She respects him too much, even if right at that moment she resents him for keeping her in the dark, once again. Because of it, Lecter has been let out of his cell, and taken somewhere by Chilton.

“And there _is_ a deal in place now, just not with us,” Jack continues, adding insult to injury, “Chilton has made a deal with Senator Martin instead, with his own conditions. All Hannibal has to do is to identify Buffalo Bill by name, and if Catherine Martin is found in time, Senator Martin will have Hannibal transferred to a state prison in Tennessee.”

“And Lecter agreed?” Zeller asks, voice stiff in a way Clarice has never heard it before.

“Of course he did,” Price scoffs.

“He did,” Jack confirms. “Hannibal told Chilton the first name of Buffalo Bill, but refused to give him more. He said that he would tell the rest to the Senator herself, but in Tennessee.”

“And Chilton agreed to that?” Price exclaims incredulously.

“He did.”

“He is a fucking idiot,” Zeller snaps. “All for the sake of getting himself in the spotlight again. Hannibal will escape in transit or something. He will get out. You know what he’s like! I have his and Will’s goddamn dogs, Jack! I have their dogs! You know what that means? He will return for Will first and then the two of them will pay a visit to my fucking house!”

“I thought you said the dogs were a joy to look after,” Price comments.

“Not the time, Jimmy,” Zeller groans, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers in frustration, “I mean, yes, they are very well trained and generally great dogs. But that is so not the point.”

Clarice has been standing in silence, staring at Jack and wondering how the hell they had managed to suddenly get everything so wrong.

But all she has to do is look back.

All she has to do is think about what Hannibal Lecter said to Will Graham over their steak dinner, knowing that Chilton was listening in;

_‘Chilton was having his fun. But I think he understands now that this triumph, his inmates being key in the bringing down of a serial killer, and saving the life of a girl, and all that will follow her, he knows the heroes it will make of them; of Jack and Clarice and him. I think he would be willing to give us up at his institution if it means being the means of catching Bill.’_

And what Will Graham had said to her only hours before;

_‘Can the hero trust others not to turn on them and attempt to become the hero themselves?’_

To know that Lecter had purposefully said those things to surely set Chilton on this very path, and then to have Graham foretell the same thing is more than a little unnerving, and incredibly frustrating. It is, quite honestly, frightening. The idea of Lecter being anywhere outside of the secure confines of his cell is a worrying prospect.

“Did the orderly tell you the first name Hannibal told Chilton?” She asks Jack quietly. She is still angry with him, but she will have to steamroll over it if she wants to remain professional, if she wants to stay on this case. She can forgive him once again for keeping things from her.

“Louis,” Jack tells her.

“Well, that narrows it down,” Zeller bites sarcastically.

“Hannibal is going to tell the Senator the full name in Memphis,” Jack says. “Which is where we have to go, Clarice. We have to go and make sure nothing goes wrong, and try and clear up this mess with Chilton and Senator Martin. Brian, if we have any reason to be concerned about the dogs,” Jack says, like he hasn’t ruled out the prospect of Lecter escaping. The ‘and you’ that was about to follow goes unspoken but very much understood. “I will call you immediately. Jimmy, stay with him until this is resolved. Get in touch with the Baltimore State Hospital and tell them to keep Will on lockdown. If Hannibal does escape, we know where he is heading first.”

“Yes, boss,” Price promises.

“Boss,” Zeller agrees, finally.

As Clarice and Jack drive in silence to the airport, to catch a late flight to Memphis, Tennessee, chasing Dr Frederick Chilton and his idiotic mistake, Clarice tries to look at the positives. Although Jack has just ended a call with some high-ranking colleague, informing him that Senator Martin is furious that they had used a phoney offer to Lecter in her name, and that she has put a team headed by an agent named Paul Krendler to take over in Memphis, the thought that a whole team is being sent to stop Lecter from going anywhere is comforting. Lecter can’t escape, Clarice reasons, not with the odds of one against a whole team of armed top FBI Tennessee agents, even if that one is Dr Hannibal Lecter. And even if Lecter did escape, he would run straight into the trap that would be waiting at the Baltimore State Hospital if he tried to return for Will.

There are reasons to believe that everything will go exactly as Chilton, Senator Martin, and even Jack, have planned.

But Clarice cannot help but feel the dread that Dr Hannibal Lecter is somehow, in some way, going to prove them all wrong.

***

There is an agent by the name of Joshua Sorrell waiting to meet them when they exit the plane at 11pm.

“Jack,” Sorrell greets. The man looks as tired as Clarice feels, but she is sure that neither of them look quite as worn as Jack.

Jack makes quick introductions for Clarice and Sorrell, and then asks Sorrell to fill them in.

“I’ll tell you as we walk,” Sorrell offers, “Krendler asked to see you the moment you arrived.” Sorrell gestures the right direction, and then sets off without waiting. “Dr Chilton arrived with Lecter a couple of hours ago. Senator Martin and the team met them air-side.”

“Were you there?”

“I was.”

“And how did it go? Was Lecter obliging?”

Sorrell pauses, “At first. They rolled him out on a transport gurney, all tied down and mask over his mouth. And yet the bastard still managed to look smug.” He glances at Jack, “Not as smug as your friend Dr Chilton, though.”

“Chilton is no friend of mine. He is a fool,” Jack grunts.

Sorrell shrugs and continues with his story, “Senator Martin briefly laid out the terms of Lecter’s transfer to another facility. Lecter asked for Will Graham’s transfer as well, and it all got a little awkward…”

“Did they agree to transfer Will?” Jack asks.

“Yes, but with no mention of the same facility. Lecter must have noticed, but he didn’t point it out. Martin had an affidavit for Lecter to sign, but Lecter said he didn’t want to ‘waste her or Catherine’s time bargaining for petty privileges’. He blamed you two for wasting time, and he said - and these are his words, not mine - ‘I only pray they haven’t doomed the poor girl’. He really wants you in the doghouse over this, Jack.”

Clarice cannot help but feel a little offended and defensive about the fact that Lecter suggested that she and Jack have been time-wasting in their hunt for Buffalo Bill and their attempt to find Catherine Martin. It stings, more than a little bit, because of how hard she has worked, and how Chilton has swooped in for the glory, and made this Tennessee Senator angry with them when she has no right to be. Clarice has been working so hard to find Senator Martin’s daughter. She has taken risks with Lecter and Graham that the Senator more than likely hasn’t a single clue about.

Jack does not seem to fixate on that as she has, and it shows the difference of years of experience between them, that Jack is just that accustomed to the difficulties of the job to let it go, and on a personal level, that accustomed to the ways of Hannibal Lecter to not be offended.

“That does not surprise me in the slightest,” Jack sounds a little exasperated, though, “What did the Senator say?”

“She agreed to forgo the signing of the document in favour of getting Lecter’s information quicker and gave her word that she would adhere to their spoken arrangement once Catherine Martin is found. And, just like that, Lecter came out with it. He said that Buffalo Bill’s real name is Louis Friend, but that it is unlikely that he still goes by that name. Lecter claims to have met him just once, when he was referred to Lecter by a patient of his named Benjamina Raspail. Apparently Friend and Raspail had been lovers, but Raspail had grown frightened of Friend; said that he was on some uncontrollable downward spiral.”

“And he killed her, in the end,” Jack nodded. “That sounds true enough. The name, however, any news on whether ‘Louis Friend’ isn’t just a red herring or a false name?”

“Nothing yet,” Sorrell says as they reach his car and they all get in. “To be honest, we have had a little more to deal with than that,” Sorrell admits once he has started the engine.

“Oh?” Jack presses.

“Once Lecter gave the name the Senator then asked for an address and physical description, which was when Lecter launched into this whole spiel about how a physical description would be difficult, if Buffalo Bill achieves his goal of assuming multiple personas. Said it would be hard to find him then. Of course, the Senator asked him to elaborate, and then Lecter decided to go and tell her, in pretty vivid detail, what would happen to her daughter; what Buffalo Bill has kidnapped her for. Then, once the Senator looked set to vomit, all pale and sweating and unnerved, Lecter asked, nice as you like, if the Senator likes patchwork coats, and that he was sure that her daughter would make a lovely addition. The Senator went ballistic, and then vowed to leave Will Graham in Baltimore whilst Lecter was transferred somewhere far away.”

“Jesus,” Jack rubs an exasperated hand over his forehead even as they walk, “That mustn’t have gone down well.”

Sorrell shook his head, stops the car at a junction, waits for a safe space, and then pulls out into the traffic heading downtown. “Lecter became curt, cold, lost the polite front a little bit. He told the Senator that her throwing pleasantries and promises out the window was rude. She argued that he had been rude when he had been purposefully graphic, and he said that he had only been trying to help, and that he could not help his lack of emotional connection or sympathy, and that he was, after-all, supposedly criminally insane. The Senator turned her back on him, all ready to leave it there, when Lecter suddenly gave up another load of information; he said that when he knew Buffalo Bill, he was tall, about 6 foot four, strongly built, fair hair, pale blue eyes. He said Bill would be in his late thirties by now; about thirty-six or thirty-seven. He said that Bill told him that he lived in Philadelphia but that he might have lied.”

“And what did the Senator say?”

“She thanked him for co-operating. She confirmed that she would keep her word and that Lecter and Graham will be both moving out of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, but probably not to the same facility. They move Lecter first thing tomorrow morning, and Chilton said he would have Graham transferred as soon as a suitable facility is decided upon.”

Jack looks grim-faced. “Where is Lecter now?”

“They are holding Lecter in a courthouse about fifteen minutes away. It’s where we are heading. Everyone is based there right now, Krendler included.”

“And where’s Dr Chilton?” Clarice asks, speaking for the first time since Sorrell had started his story about Lecter’s meeting with Senator Martin.

Sorrell shrugs, glancing at her in the rear-view mirror. “I don’t know. An hour ago he was talking to the press, against our advice. They were reporting about Senator Martin’s meeting with Dr Lecter and about the fact that Lecter is assisting in the investigation to find Buffalo Bill. Last I saw of Chilton he was spelling out his surname to the reporter, claiming to be the one whose insight into Lecter’s mind has made the breakthrough possible.”

“Of course he bloody has,” Jack growls, “That man is completely insufferable. He never learns from his mistakes, no matter how badly he is punished for them.”

An awkward silence falls over the car. Clarice thinks of Chilton’s fire-scarred flesh, his reconstructed face, and his body filled with organs that had been taken out and put back in again. He had been set up for murder, he had had his lips bitten off…is Chilton a glutton for punishment? Or is he a hundred percent certain that he isn’t going to end up at the hands of a serial killer again? Because even Clarice isn’t a hundred percent certain about that.

“Freddie Lounds will be furious to have missed this story,” She says to break the silence, “After all she has being the main reporter about Lecter and Graham, and what with how well she knows Chilton, she won’t be pleased that she didn’t get the breaking story. She will be wanting an exclusive.”

“She will likely be already on her way here,” Jack agrees, darkly amused. “If I was her, I wouldn’t be running _towards_ the place where Lecter is being ‘temporarily held’.”

“He isn’t getting out, Jack,” Sorrell reassures him firmly. “He is behind bars and under so much security that he isn’t going anywhere.”

“You don’t know him like I do, Josh,” Jack sighs, “Everyone will have to be on high alert. But you are right. He isn’t going anywhere. Not this time. We can't have that happen.”

They arrive at the courthouse, and Clarice follows Jack and Sorrell into the building, flashing her ID to the appropriate people as she passes them where they stand guard at the main entrance. She holds a pile of papers in her hands; papers that came with her all the way from Baltimore.

Once they get inside, Sorrell stops.

“Krendler is just through there,” He points to a nearby door, “But he just wants to speak to you alone, Jack.”

“Clarice can wait out here, can’t you, Clarice?” Jack asks her.

Clarice nods. Jack spoke to her on the flight over about what she needs to do. She knows what she has to do.

“Where is Lecter being held, Sorrell? I hope it’s secure,” Jack says to Sorrell as they walk towards the room Krendler is currently using as a temporary office.

“Fourth floor. It’s secure. I will show you later…”

The conversation is cut off as Sorrell opens the door and shows Jack inside. Jack turns and nods at her, just before the door closes after them.

Clarice knows what she has to do. She heads towards the lift, meeting security on the way.

The head of the ground floor security eyes her with the caution of finding her unfamiliar. She shows him her ID.

“Starling, huh?" His expression lightens with recognition, "You are one of Jack Crawford’s agents from Baltimore, aren’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Where you needing to go?”

“Fourth floor. I have been told to check on Dr Lecter.”

He frowns, “Are you with Dr Chilton’s group?”

“I spoke to him earlier, yes. I have permission from Chilton to speak to Dr Lecter.” which wasn’t exactly a lie. She did have permission, back at the Baltimore State Hospital, and Chilton has never technically revoked that permission. “I’m here on Jack Crawford’s orders, too.”

“Access to Lecter is limited,” The security says carefully, “We have been getting death threats and…”

“I understand that, sir,” Clarice says, “I mean Lecter no harm, and have spoken with him on behalf of Frederick Chilton and Jack Crawford before. If you would like me to contact Frederick or Jack…”

He holds up a hand, “No need for that. We will log you in and check in your weapon, and have a look through those papers that you have there…”

She does as instructed, and then is allowed up to the fourth floor. She stands in the elevator, not quite believing she has gotten away with it. She is surprised that she has had to confirm that she means Lecter no harm, particularly when it is much more likely to be the other way around.

When the elevator opens, she is greeted by the sight of a group of guards, gathered around a door further down the corridor.

“Is it true what they’re saying?” One of them is asking the others, looking awed and afraid in equal measure, “He’s some kind of vampire?”

“They don’t have a name for what he is,” another replies grimly. 

Clarice clears her throat. They all turn to face her.

She introduces herself and tells them that she has been allowed up to see Dr Lecter.

“You do know the rules, Starling?” One of them, who introduced himself as Lieutenant Boyle, asks her.

“Yes, Lieutenant Boyle,” she promises, “I have questioned him before.”

And so they allow her into the room, so she can question him again.

Lecter clocks her immediately, and like a lion in a zoo, or a bird of prey in a cage, he stares at her through the bars of his free-standing cage of bars and that penetrating stare follows her as she closes the door behind her and takes a couple of steps into the room.  
  
"Good evening, Clarice," Lecter greets. "It is a surprise to see you here."  
  
“One of the men outside thinks that you might be a vampire.” She does not know why she says it, but she does.

Lecter cocks his head slightly to one side, grins wide so that his incisors are on show, which does not help the mental image Clarice has running through her head; of Hannibal Lecter with a taste for flesh, a blood thirst in his eyes and his posture, wishing to drink in everything about those around him, and with an addiction to the taste of Will Graham. Whilst her mind supplies a more  stereotypical vampiric image like the ones in the movies – extended incisors and black eyes - the actual description, she realises, is actually the same as reality.

But this is a cannibal, not a vampire.

“And some of them don’t have a name for what you are,” She says.

“They prefer to think that I am some kind of a monster or a vampire,” Lecter replies smoothly, “Because they don't like to consider the fact that I am just human. A human with flesh and bones. And teeth. Just like them, just like you. It is my actions that define me as a monster to them, but anybody can be capable of that, and that, Clarice, that is what worries them."  
  
"Not everybody is capable of terrible things," Clarice states firmly.  
  
"But everybody is capable of making mistakes," Dr Lecter says, and his grin grows, "And mistakes can have terrible, terrible consequences."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait for this chapter folks! It ended up being longer than expected, so there is still another chapter to go! (Or two, if that one ends up being long too, which knowing me, is a definite possibility).

"And are you counting on the mistakes of others, Dr Lecter?” Clarice asks, not allowing herself to back down in the face of the thinly veiled intimidation.

“On the consequences of them,” Lecter tells her. “The consequences of Chilton’s mistake brought me here.”

“Here,” Clarice states, “Is just another cage, in another state.”

“True, but I will not be staying here for long.”

“Moved on. To another cage, in another state.”

“Another place,” Lecter agrees, sighs, “I will be leaving without Will. And that saddens me more than you could possibly imagine. It was most wonderful to see him again, this evening. I thank you for organising it, Clarice, for allowing me to see him before I had to go.”

The thanks is so genuine, the devastation edging his tone so raw, that Clarice shuffles awkwardly under the sound of it.

“It was not my decision in the end,” She says eventually.

“You set it all in motion, and for that you have my gratitude. And Will’s I am sure.”

Clarice thinks back to her conversation with Will Graham after his and Lecter’s meeting and she is not so sure that Graham’s gratitude was sincere, but that does not matter, because she did not want their gratitude in the first place. But she needs Dr Lecter to comply, so she does not tell him that, as she did Will Graham. She and Graham could be rude to each other, but Clarice cannot risk being rude to Dr Lecter, for fear of him refusing to give her any more information regarding Buffalo Bill.

So instead, she bites her tongue to stop herself rejecting his thanks, and shifts the rolled up papers in her hands, drawing Lecter’s attention to them.

“I thought you might like your drawings back, Doctor, until you get to your new accommodation with a view.”

“How thoughtful,” Lecter smiles at her. It is a charming and narrow, yet handsome smile that is enchanting enough to know how he has lured in so many. But then his eyes narrow, and it is a little less charming in its smug faux-suspicion, “Did dear Jack send you in for a few final questions before you are both officially removed from the case by the authority of Senator Martin?”

“No,” Clarice says. Jack knows she is here, but even if he hadn’t, and she had been given this chance, she knows she would have taken it. She should be angry that Lecter is mocking her about the fact that he has orchestrated the uproar surrounding the Senator, the fake offer and the imminent removal of Jack and herself from leading the case. “I came because I wanted to.”

“Careful, Clarice,” Lecter smiles that slow and charismatic smile once more, “People might start to suspect that we are becoming a little too well acquainted.”

She remembers Graham’s accusatory taunts, and hears Lecter’s suggestions, and she does not know why the insinuation gives her the smallest thrill, alongside the disgust.

“Then they would be wrong,” She states firmly, “I do admit, however, that we are acquainted enough that I know when you are playing your games, Dr Lecter; enough to know that ‘Louis Friend’ is nothing but an anagram. Louis Friend - Iron Sulfide - also known as fool’s gold. You have played them all for fools.”

“Not you, though, Clarice,” Lecter says, “I have few opportunities to have a little fun, these days. So you must forgive me for a final jest.”

“This is not a joke. Lives are on the line.”

“Which makes it far more entertaining, and you know it,” Lecter dismisses. “And before I consider you too serious for a line of work that demands a little light-heartedness to avoid falling into the dark chasm of despair over the true cruelty of the world, I must know, have you told Jack the answer to my riddle?”

Clarice swallows. She had only realised it on the way up in the elevator. She knew she was delaying the case, deciding to continue to visit Lecter rather than calling Jack and informing him of what she knows, but she was too eager to see Lecter. She and Jack have a plan, and she will stick to it. She will tell them about the anagram once she has seen Lecter, if they haven’t figured it out themselves by that point. “Not yet.”

“Ah,” Lecter looks pleased, “So you _are_ still playing the game. How exciting. I apologise for assuming you to lack a sense of challenge and enjoyment over the matter.”

“I am still playing the game,” She confirms. She does not tell him whether or not she finds said game either a challenge, or enjoyable. She moves forwards, and passes Lecter’s drawings to him through the bars. She is wary that he will try to grab her, but he moves towards her slowly, arms raised in supplication, and reaches out to take the papers from her calmly, steadily. He wants his drawings back, she can tell, and he does not want to jeopardise the situation by scaring her away. He wants his drawings and he wants to speak to her. He wants to carry on their game, and for that, he needs to keep his opponent present. He does not try anything, but she still steps back once he has the papers in his hands. “And I believe it to be my move?” She adds.

Lecter relaxes his posture, makes it look like carefully controlled grace. He places the drawings on his plastic table and rolls them out. The top one is a sketch of Will Graham, shadowed in dark grey, coated in black, which she assumes is to depict blood, and the moonlight behind him. Lecter's fingers trace the drawn face of Graham lightly.

“Yes, of course,” He obliges politely, clearly appeased by her offering, “Your turn, Clarice.”

“Have you read the case files?”

“I have. Have you?” Clarice blinks at his response and Lecter looks amused. “That is a genuine question, Clarice. In fact, I am a little disappointed in you, truth be told. Everything that you need to find him is right there in those pages,” He points at his copy of the case file, which lies on the small single bed in the cell. He clearly had been allowed to bring it with him, “I do not know how you cannot yet see it.”

 _‘Do you see now? Do you see?’_ She hears Will Graham ask her. She thinks of her reply; _‘No I don’t see.’_

 _‘It is nice to see you find these things out on your own. But you could find them out all much faster, Agent Starling, if you just opened your eyes and started to really_ see _.’_

_‘Is that what happened to you? Why are you here right now, because you ‘opened your eyes’? Because if that is the case, I would rather not ‘see’. I’ll keep my eyes shut, thank you.’_

But maybe she cannot keep her eyes shut. Maybe she is missing something obvious by being cautious to comply. But it is less about deciding to open them, as knowing how. Will Graham could open his eyes naturally due to empathy. Clarice is more strategic than that, and strategy does not allow her the sight that it has gifted – or cursed – upon Will Graham. Either way, Hannibal Lecter is urging her to do so, just as he did Will Graham. She does not want Lecter to win, but she wants to beat the Buffalo, and she does not know if she can do it without him. Not if she cannot see what he sees.

“Can you tell me?” She decides carefully, “Can you tell me how?”

Lecter’s expression turns overly sympathetic, “No, I am afraid that I cannot tell you. You have to see it for yourself. We could, however, negotiate a little more over what I knew of Buffalo Bill…”

“Quid pro quo?” She asks, as weary as she is wary. She knows what he wants. She thinks she might have to give it to him.

“Exactly,” Lecter smiles pleasantly at her. It’s enticing the way that a bright light looks to an insect before they come to realise their mistake; like a moth to a deadly flame. Entraps like a spider web, and the spider keeps the winged creatures it catches alive before it wraps them up in silk and later devours them. “And do not take too long with your decision, Clarice, if you please. Catherine Martin hasn’t the time for deliberating.”

“Then she also doesn’t have the time for us to waste on your questions…”

“I have time,” Lecter says, “So do you. Tick tock…”

“No I don’t have time,” Clarice interrupts, “I know that you know that I don’t actually have the official authority to be here.”

“I know,” Lecter’s eyes gleam, “How rebellious, Clarice. Krendler will be most displeased with you. You know, after he picks your brains over Buffalo Bill and finds out all you know and I have moved on, he will remove you completely from the case. I heard he finds you too young and inexperienced to be weighted with such an important role. But I know better. I know you, now. I know that you will pick his brains in turn,” He smirks, “Maybe I can pick his brains for you.”

Clarice forces the gruesome mental image Lecter just supplied out of her mind, along with the defensive irritation she feels about what Krendler supposedly said of her. Supposedly, because Lecter could just be saying those things to unsettle her and cause a rift between her and Krendler before they have even officially met. She hopes that is the case. She wants Krendler’s respect. But even now she knows she will be testing that respect, and that Krendler will think little of her indeed, when he finds out that she has come in here to talk to Lecter without his authority. But right now, although she wants Krendler’s respect, she needs Hannibal Lecter’s more.

“The second that Krendler finds out I am here talking to you, he will have me removed. If you would just listen to me…”

“I _am_ listening,” Lecter counters. “I am prepared to listen. The longer you argue the more you waste your time of having me here to listen.”

 “Fine,” Clarice throws her hands up in frustration, “I will play the game.”

“As I thought you might,” Lecter nods in approval. “May I begin with a question so that I may then listen?”

He is being patronising on purpose. Unfortunately Clarice hasn’t the time to argue.

“You may.”

He nods. “After your father’s murder, you were orphaned. You were ten years old, if I remember correctly?” He is asking for show, she knows he remembers. “You went to live with relatives on a sheep and horse ranch in Montana. You ran away after only a short time. Why did you leave the ranch?”

Once again, Clarice wants to snap at him. She wants to ask him why he wants to know. Why he even cares about this, but then, she already knows that it is because he does not really care. All he wants to do is dig in deep and set the claws in. He wants to have some kind of an upper hand. He wants to understand her mind so that he can pick it apart. She should not tell him more, but her need for information once again wins out. She doesn’t want to think about the past, she doesn’t want to drag it all up. Not that memory. Not the one she stores away so deeply that it only revisits her in the darkest of moments. She doesn’t want to tell something she has never told anybody to Dr Hannibal Lecter. But she also wants to solve this case. It is the traumas of her past versus the potential of her future, and she knows that she has to be brave. Bravery is what got her here, face to face with a serial killer so infamous his name will go down in history. She isn’t giving up so easily.

“Something woke me up,” Clarice says. “It was the early hours of the morning. Still dark.” There had been no light coming through the threadbare curtains. The room had been bathed in darkness, and ten year old Clarice had felt so overwhelmingly afraid.

“What was it that woke you? A dream?”

She shakes her head. “No. It was a noise.” She hears the sound even as she says it. She feels her skin start to goosebump. “It was screaming,” She admits in a rush, that childish fear still inside of her, even now. “Some kind of screaming, like a child’s voice.”

Lecter looks intrigued. “What did you do then, Clarice? I assume that someone with your courage did not just hide beneath the covers and wait for it to be over?”

“I went downstairs,” She confirms. She remembers it all in vivid detail; how she looked down at her small bare feet as they descended the stairs in the dark, grip tight on the banister. How she had slipped her boots on by the door. How she had opened the door and stepped out into the cold night. “I went outside. The noise was coming from the barn, so I crept towards it. I was so scared to look inside but I…” Just like any situation that had ever made her afraid, her curiosity had won out as always. She faced it all head on. Whether it be the death of her parents, the trials of the academy, the crime scenes and criminals and murderers she had faced, the cannibal serial killers she interviewed...she just had to face the fears, even if she was terrified by the outcome. “I had to,” She says.

“What did you see, Clarice?” Lecter encourages, eyes bright and his attention completely focused upon her. It was peculiar, to know that at that moment, she was the centre of Hannibal Lecter’s thoughts and attentions. She would find it thrilling, if she were not reliving the horrors witnessed by her ten year old self, which has haunted nightmares since. “What did you see?”

“Lambs,” She says finally, closes her eyes as she tried to block the images from her mind. Even as those images darken the sound carries on. “They were screaming,” her voice wobbles marginally, only just, but she knows Lecter will have heard it.

“They were slaughtering the spring lambs?” Lecter guesses.

“And they were screaming,” She says on a whisper.

She can hear them, as clear now as that dark, cold morning all those years ago. She can hear them scream. Their innocent, terrified screams. She feels the panic, she feels the nauseous urge to try to rescue, to run, the helpless feeling that she cannot do a single damn thing.

She forces her eyes open, and Hannibal Lecter is staring at her with open fascination. It is not a cold, calculating look. It is warmer than that. An honest curiosity; like it is the glimpse of her that he has been seeking.

“And then you…”

“Excuse me, Doctor Lecter,” She says, needing a moment of respite, a moment to compose herself. “But I believe it is your turn. Quid pro quo?”

“Of course,” Lecter allows immediately, which is surprising.

“Tell me more about Buffalo Bill. Information that I can use. Something I don’t know. I know you will not so easily divulge his name, but give me something. And whilst Louis Friend is an anagram, was your description of his appearance and where he was from a lie too?”

“I was truthful in all but the name,” Lecter informs her. “And as I said to you before, whilst I like nothing more than to serve a succulent meal on a grand, silver platter, I am much less willing to serve information in the same way. I know you have an intelligent mind, Clarice, I have seen it. You relish a challenge, and I cherish creating the puzzle.” He pauses, steps closer, and Clarice meets his searching, encouraging gaze.

She feels caught on the mystery, she feels hung on his every word. She feels more intelligent for having him told her so. He knows she likes the challenge, so she awaits his latest puzzle.

“Do you remember what I said to you when you asked me whether I thought that Bill suffered from some form of multiple personality disorder?”

Clarice thought back, “You said that he is nothing more than the usual psychopath. You said he had likely been a lot of things, over the years, and that this wish to become multiple people is just a phase; a new excuse to murder. You said he is not loyal to humans as he is to creatures.”

“And what did I say of his nature?”

“That he obsesses. He has an obsessive, all-consuming focus for his new ‘project’, which he thinks is justifiable. You said that he collects, he craves, he desires. That he…” She grasps for the very word that Lecter had used, “You said that he covets.”

“Exactly,” Lecter smiles that smile again, “He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice?”

Clarice frowns. “I suppose you would start by coveting things that you are familiar with.”

“Precisely. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t your eyes seek out the things that you want?”

Clarice immediately averts her gaze from Lecter’s face.

“In some ways.”

“That is the essence, the core, if you will, of Buffalo Bill’s entire nature. And that, Clarice, that will help you more than any physical description. It is not his face you would need to see to catch him, it is something else that you need to see. It is all there, as clear as words on a page, you just have to see it. Now tell me, Clarice, what happened when you saw those lambs on the ranch? You ran away?”

She allows the divergence, in the hopes of gaining more information afterwards.

“Not at first. At first I tried to free them. I opened the gate to their pen, but they wouldn’t run.” As quickly as she had escaped the memory, she finds herself there again, in those small work boots, trying to urge the lambs away. She feels the frustration she felt, she felt the lump in her throat, the panic in her heart, the tears in her eyes, the way that she pleaded with them to stop being stupid and just _run._ Get away. And stop _screaming_ like that. It hurts her heart like it is being slowly shredded. “They just stood there confused,” She says. So desperately frustrated, she had been. Why wouldn’t they _leave?_ “They just…they wouldn’t run.”

“But you could,” Lecters voice cuts through Clarice’s memories, and reaches where she stands in the boots of a ten year old, who is almost hysterical in her horror.  “And you did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” She whispers, to where Lecter stands before her in the freestanding cell, and to where he stands at her side, at the entrance to the lamb’s pen in the barn. “Yes.” She sees herself reach out. She catches a lamb. “I took one lamb. It was all I could carry. And I ran away as fast as I could.”

“Where were you going, Clarice?” Lecter asks her in the present day.

“Where are you going, Clarice?” Lecter asks, as he strides easily beside her as she runs down the farm track with a lamb clutched desperately in her arms.

“I don’t know,” Clarice of both reality and memory admits. She still has absolutely no idea where she was going that morning. “I didn’t have any food, any water. It was very cold, I remember.”

She feels the chill on her skin and the warmth of the lamb pressed to her front, the strange texture of its closely curled wool between her fingers. “I thought,” She starts, “I thought if I could save just one, but he was so heavy.”

He had been a big lamb, an older lamb, not a newborn spring lamb. He was going to be meat.

She feels the weight of him. He is big; too heavy for a young girl’s arms. The adrenaline is keeping her going.

“He is so heavy,” She says, breathless, as Lecter shadows her down the dirt road in the dawn.

“I didn’t get more than a few miles when the sheriff’s car picked me up. The rancher was so angry he sent me to an orphanage. I never saw the ranch again.”

Little Clarice has the lamb wrapped close in her arms, as she sees the sheriff’s car approach. She wants to run, but knows he will catch her. She is so tired. Hannibal Lecter stands beside her, looks down at her and the lamb.

“What became of your lamb, Clarice?” Lecter asks her, as the lamb is taken from her arms.

“He killed him,” She whispers, as she is pushed, wailing and fighting and begging, into the back of the car.

Lecter sits beside her in the ride back to the ranch.

“You still wake up sometimes, don’t you?” Lecter asks her, looking out the window, rather than at her, enjoying his new view, she supposes. “You wake up in the dark, and hear the screaming of the lambs?”

“Yes,” Clarice tells him on nothing but a murmur.

“And do you think,” Lecter turns to look at her now, “If you save Catherine Martin, that you can make them stop? You think that if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs?”

“I don’t know,” Clarice chokes, shocked, and suddenly she is far away from the ranch, far away from her poor, poor lamb, and back in a court room in Memphis, and Hannibal Lecter is standing in front of her, bars of his cage between them. “I don’t know,” She says again.

She knows she does what she does to make her father proud, to make herself proud. She enjoys her work, she finds it thrilling, rewarding, she knows that she is doing good. Making a difference. And whilst each time her father came home and told her that he had caught the bad guys Clarice would vow that one day she was going to be a cop, catching bad guys just like her father, maybe it had also been that dark, cold morning when she was ten years old, that had made her so passionate; had given her the desperate desire to save all the innocent lambs. As many lambs as she could. Maybe then, once she has saved as many as possible, she can stop them all from screaming.

“Thank you for telling me your story, Clarice,” Lecter tells her sincerely. “Thank you. Will suffered a similar complex, you know. He tried to save, to rescue. He collected his dogs. He saved lives. Because he hoped it would counteract the group of murderers that he was unwillingly collecting in his head. He found it difficult to get rid of a different kind of plague of the mind. He had his antlers, his wings, the murderers and the victims, all whispering in his head. I think he just wanted them to be quiet, but the more he tried to quiet them, the more numerous and loud and influential they got.”

“He says he knows how to control them, now.”

“He does.”

“And what made his mind quiet, Dr Lecter?” She asks. Was it when Graham recovered from his encephalitis? Was it when he saw Hannibal Lecter for what he truly was? Was it when he saw the Chesapeake Ripper behind bars? Was it when he found a wife and a stepson and had three years of relative normality? Was it when he defeated the Red Dragon? Was it when he accepted his love for Hannibal Lecter and ran away with him and embraced his new lifestyle?

“I made it worse, because I could,” Lecter says, “And then I made it better. Yet he is the one that learnt to listen to, or ignore, whatever was left. Believe it or not, Clarice, Will Graham is more at peace with himself now than he ever was. He is extraordinary. He is fascinating. Unique minds interest me. Will has always intrigued me. And you Clarice, I must admit that your mind is remarkable also. I can see it in you. You just need to learn to quiet that screaming yourself, and not trust in the saving of others. Save yourself, Clarice Starling, and learn to fly, and open those eyes, and those lambs will quiet all on their own. Of course, catching Buffalo Bill and saving Catherine Martin may silence them for a while, but they will start bleating again, unless you come to terms with them, and yourself.”

“I am not like Will Graham, and I am not like you. I will not ever ‘find myself’ being anything like the pair of you.”

“I did not say that you would,” Lecter corrects. “You are a different breed, Clarice. A starling. Whereas Will and I, we are stags and wolves in equal measure. You seek freedom for yourself and others. We seek something very different.”

“What I seek right now is Buffalo Bill,” Clarice needs to get Lecter back on track. She knows that she is running out of time. She can hear shouting beyond the door. “I need a name, Dr Lecter.”

“To free a lamb from a pen must be an exhilarating thing to do, even as you left the others behind. Stags are harder to contain. They would not stand confused. And they would not need saving.”

“Dr Lecter, please, don’t tangent now! It’s my turn.”

The doors burst open. “Agent Starling! Step away from the cage immediately!”

“It’s your turn, Doctor,” Clarice begs, “Please, Hannibal, _please_. Tell me his name!”

Lecter smiles, slow and long at the sound of his forename spoken singularly.

A hand lands on Clarice’s forearm. “Agent Starling, you should not be in here. Krendler has ordered you to his office immediately.”

“You are brave, Clarice,” Lecter says, “And that is why you will learn to fly and open those eyes. I have no doubt about that. You will let me know when those lambs stop screaming, won’t you?”

Clarice lets out a cry of frustration, “Enough!” She snaps at the officer tugging at her, “I am coming.”

She turns to look at Hannibal Lecter one last time, frustrated with him, angry, but he is not looking at her. He is snatching up his copy of the case file from his bed.

“Clarice,” Lecter says, “Your case file. Don’t forget it.”

She knows there is intention in his action, and so she breaks away from the officer and darts forward to take the file. Lecter does not grab at her, he merely hands it back, their fingers accidentally brushing as she takes it. They lock gazes for one, long moment, and Clarice stares into dark eyes that are near maroon, and she understands now, she understands that Bedelia Du Maurier was right. Clarice is caught, like that unsuspecting fly, in a web of delicate and multi-layered design. Hannibal Lecter is the spider. The weaver. And Clarice does not know how she will get free, if she will ever truly free herself from that, even if this is the last time she will ever see his face.

“Goodbye Clarice,” Hannibal Lecter smiles, before she leaves him.

The distance will be put between them by the end of the day, but she will forever have a connection with Dr Hannibal Lecter that can never be altered. He knows more about her than anyone ever has. He knows her worst memories. He knows about the screaming. It scares her. It thrills her. And she truly does not know whether to be thankful or disappointed that she will never see him again.

***

Paul Krendler isn’t quite what Clarice expected; he is classically handsome, at least two decades younger than Jack, and Clarice is sure that he is a remarkable individual; not many get to his standing at the US Justice Department at that age. But because he is the one who has taken over the _Buffalo Bill Case_ and the custody of Lecter, Clarice cannot help but feel a little bit of resentment towards the man, because it is Jack Crawford’s team that has done all the work thus far. She has put so much, and too much of herself, into this case, and it has been stolen out of her fingers and placed in Krendler’s hands instead.

Paul Krendler may be a decent man despite her (admittedly rather unprofessional) bitterness, but as he angrily paces his office and harshly criticises her and Jack for their stupid decisions, Clarice finds herself disliking him anyway. He is patronising enough to make her suspect that what Lecter said was true; that Krendler truly did believe her too young and inexperienced to handle such a critical case. So she decides to prove him wrong. She shows what she can do. She tells him that 'Louis Friend' is an anagram, and that whilst Lecter’s physical description is accurate, the name is a joking red herring.

Now that Krendler knows that Clarice gained confirmation of that information during her unauthorised meeting with Lecter, it appeases him a little. And whilst he does tell them that they are no longer needed on the case, he isn’t going to be immediately sending them home, because they are undeniably valuable when it comes to dealing with Dr Lecter. Chilton is still swanning around somewhere, but even Krendler knows that Chilton is not the one who got information out of Hannibal Lecter in the first place. He knows he may still need Jack and Clarice’s inside knowledge, people Lecter knows and respects enough to talk to.

Krendler sends them both away until he calls for them again. It is a kick in the teeth, but at least they aren’t being sent back to Baltimore.

They end up in a diner a block away from the courthouse, nursing grainy coffee over a red and white checked plastic table top in silence.

They have been there well over an hour and not said a word. Clarice ignores the case file sitting enticingly on the table beside her; she cannot bear to look at it at this moment, not with Jack there to sigh and tell her it isn’t their problem anymore, that it’s in Krendler’s hands. Instead she picks at the polystyrene cup of coffee and looks at Jack.

Jack looks tired. More tired than she has ever seen him; not even when it was assumed that Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham had drowned in the sea, not even when Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham were on the run and bodies were showing up around Europe, not even this tired when each year brings around the anniversary of his wife’s death, not even when Lecter and Graham were caught and he had endless days in court. There are dark circles under his eyes. He looks haggard. There is more grey in his hair. He isn’t as clean shaven as normal. His fingers grip his coffee tight, like he needs all the energy that he can get, and she feels deeply, terribly sorry for him.

“There has to be something we can do, Sir,” She tries.

He shakes his head, “Not anymore, Starling.”

“But we are still here,” She points out, “Krendler knows we are vital to this case and he hasn’t sent us home. We are still here, we are still involved. We need to keep alert don’t we, Sir? And we need to keep thinking over everything Lecter told me.”

“His riddles to solve,” Jack laughs bitterly, “So many goddamn riddles.” He sends her a quick, apologetic smile, “But you are quite right, Starling. As long as we are still involved, we need to do whatever we can. Thanks to your questioning of Hannibal, we know that the physical description he gave of Bill was the truth. Or at least, we know what he looked like when he knew Hannibal and before he killed Benjamina Raspail.”

“Lecter also mentioned Bill’s tailor-like precision. He is making himself a suit of skin, and if he is continuing to take people, it must mean that his project is going well so far, which means he can sew, and if Lecter’s description is true, then he may be very skilled. He might well be a tailor or a dressmaker of some kind.”

“That could be why he keeps his victims alive for several days, you know,” Jack says thoughtfully, “He starves them over those days in order to loosen the skin.”

Clarice tries not to grimace into her coffee. It is obvious how many terrible, brutal things Jack Crawford has seen during his career that he barely even reacts to such a realisation.

“Which means that Catherine Martin definitely has another day at least.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you think we will make it in time?”

“If Krendler comes to his senses and decides to listen to us; about Bill, about Hannibal, all of it. Yes. I hope so.”

Clarice sips her lukewarm coffee, not particularly enjoying it, but needing to occupy herself somehow.

“Do you miss them, Jack?” She asks into the quiet.

“Will and Hannibal, you mean?”

She nods.

Jack turns to look out of the window, watches a car pass on the quieter street. He doesn’t say anything for a while.

“You know, they encouraged me to see a psychiatrist after everything that happened,” Jack says, finally. He snorts. “I said I didn’t need it. The truth was I knew that all I would think about was Hannibal. I would imagine Hannibal sitting there, talking things through, hearing his voice. He had such a presence, Starling. It was how he deceived us all for so long. You just believed everything he said to you. He had such calm, he knew just what to say, a lot of the time, whether to fix a situation or, I suppose looking back, make it worse. I look back and I see the calculation in it all, but at the time, none of us could see it.”

Clarice can understand that; the presence and charm that won them all over and kept them fooled for so long. She would like to think that if she had been there that she would have been able to see through Lecter’s guise, but she knows she is lying to herself. She would have been entranced just like the rest of them.

“Will was never so tactful,” Jack says, “He was socially awkward, and he was blunt with his words. But he was such a complex person, who wanted to do good, and did do good. He was a good man.” Jack glances at her. “I know that you might find that hard to believe having only met the man who exists today, but I knew a very, very different Will.”

Lecter’s statement from mere hours ago rises to the forefront of her mind;  _Will Graham is more at peace with himself now than he ever was._ She wonders how true that is. She thinks back to her meetings with Will Graham and thinks that it might be.

“And sometimes,” Jack says, “I do miss how things were.” He looks at her, now. “I don’t admit that often, because it would cause the assumption that I missed being oblivious to what Hannibal was, that I missed dining at his house and that I still wanted Will to be like he was when he was suffering from encephalitis. But that is not what I mean by it. I miss Will, and I know that I failed him. Even now I wonder if there is something I could have done, could have seen, that would have saved him in time. I miss who Will was. Hannibal, Hannibal was, before everything came out, great company. In some way I miss the time when I was oblivious, because of how much Bella and I enjoyed Hannibal’s parties, but then I remember that he was playing us the entire time and what the meat we had been eating was…” Jack’s fingers absently tighten and begin to crush the empty polystyrene cup. “And then I feel guilty for missing it. Missing them.”

Clarice carefully reaches out, and takes the cup from Jack’s hands.

“It is a situation that is so rare, that no-one can really tell you how you should or shouldn’t feel about it,” she reasons. “No-one would think less of you, Sir.”

“I do not know if that is true, Clarice. It certainly wasn’t at the time,” He smiles wearily, “But thank you.”

They order a second coffee, for lack of anything else to do.

She is not surprised that Hannibal had so easily deceived and manipulated those that knew him. There is something very appealing about him; an elegance, a charm, and a care and empathy that must surely be mostly false, but is convincing regardless. He became their friend, an ear that listened, a tongue that gave advice even as it spun its lies, which made his betrayal all the more painful. In the early days, Jack and the others trusted Hannibal’s integrity strongly. To the point that they had trusted Hannibal’s word over Will Graham’s for a long time. A time in which lives could have been saved, and Will Graham could have been spared the torment that had dragged him in and dragged him down. Jack misses having Hannibal as the friend he had appeared to be, and must replay each meeting, each dinner, each conversation, each investigation in his head with new eyes; when Hannibal had given him advice, what had been his true motivations? When Hannibal had made an observation, what had been his true intentions?

Hannibal is enigmatic. He is magnetic. He is courteous. And yet he is evil and cunning. He is violent and dangerous. A killer. A cannibal. He is a manipulator that toys with people’s minds and hearts for fun.

Clarice knows she has been entranced, just a little, just like all of the rest of them had been. All of the Hannibal that she has experienced so far has been wrapped up in the chase of Buffalo Bill, the mystery of the puzzle; the thrill and the adrenaline and the rush of being toe-to-toe with notorious killers, trying to outsmart them, being outsmarted in turn. She cannot deny that it has been a terrifying heady rush.

Clarice had always longed to meet Will Graham. He had been the puzzle, the mystery, the main character of a tragic story with so many twists and turns, and it had ended in a cell in the Baltimore State Hospital. She had wanted to meet him. He had been Jack’s protégé, he had been respected as a special agent with an overwhelming intelligence and empathy. He had been responsible for the capture or deaths of some of the most notable killers in recent US history. He had been responsible for the deaths of many innocent people since. He had been intriguing, he had looked so innocent. That innocence is still there, somewhere, something vulnerable that Graham plays on, even as he knows how very powerful he also is. He was confused and conflicted, and appears confused and conflicted now, but it is hard to work out what is the Will Graham of old, what is the new Will Graham, and what is an act. She never met the old Will Graham; he was the character in her case file. All she knows is the new Will Graham; the one with the sass, the one that intimidates by being entirely too perceptive and difficult to pin down. He is absent and yet eerily present. He is sarcastic and blunt. He has been worn down and built back up one too many times, and the walls of mystery and unique attitude have become strong to the point of being impenetrable. She has met Will Graham several times, now, and is really no nearer to figuring out who he truly is now, what he truly is now, what he truly wants now. He is fascinating still because of it, that is undeniable, but it is a frustrating fascination, because she met him with so many questions about the man that had intrigued her for so long, and had not had a single answer as to why he made the decisions that he did.

In contrast, Hannibal has been considerably more accommodating. Yes, she has had to ‘quid pro quo’ her way to answers, and given away some personal memories that she has only ever kept to herself, but she thinks Hannibal is easier to read; whether his actions are a gameplay or not. Their back and forth for information has been intense; exhilaratingly, frustratingly, chillingly, addictively intense. Yes, Hannibal Lecter is a cannibal and a serial killer, cold hearted and cruel and black-hearted and only out for his own interests, and yet he was different from every other criminal, every other killer she had encountered. Hannibal Lecter was unique, terrifying and captivating.

Clarice had always been fascinated by Will Graham, because he had been relatable. But it was Hannibal that she had come to be entranced by.

She realises that she has been thinking of Lecter by his first name since her thoughts had wandered over her second coffee. The coffee suddenly tastes even bitterer, and the disappointment that her father would have inevitably felt weighs heavy on her shoulders.

_“Did you catch any bad guys today, Clarice?”_

_“I’m sorry, angel. I’m so sorry. I think I’ve been letting them in.”_

She mentally asks her father for forgiveness, and promises him that she will do better. She has had temporary slip of judgement. But she will fix it. Besides, after today, she will never have to see Hannibal Lecter again. He hasn’t won. He will never win. She won’t let him in any further. She won’t let him in, and he won’t be getting out.

Jack receives a phone call. She sees the moment Jack’s face pales and the remaining resolve holding him together crumbles.

Hannibal Lecter has escaped.

***

Hannibal Lecter had asked for his dinner that night to be lamb chops, cooked extra rare. The dinner had been one of his conditions to Chilton in the supplying of information to Senator Martin. Two officers; Sergeant Pembry and the officer that Clarice had met earlier that night, Lieutenant Boyle, had taken the dinner in to Lecter. Other than that, everything that happened in that room had to be assumed; the decision to keep Lecter in a courtroom meant that it was secure, but had no CCTV within the room, and there was also the fact that Lecter had been the only one who had left the room alive.

Boyle and Pembry surely must have followed the drill they had already done once before, which was to have Lecter sit on the floor, back against the bars with his arms through them, so that they could cuff his hands behind him, secured to the bars. It is assumed that they got that far, because they had gotten into the cell with him. Lecter must have had the means to free himself. The next thing the officers downstairs had seen was the lift numbers rising to floor five, and nobody had been authorised to do so. The next moment, the sound of shots being fired, and the lift descended to floor three. On high alert, with a ten block radius sealed, and a SWAT team and ambulance called for, Krendler and his officers had gone up to the courtroom that Lecter had been held in. They had been met with a grotesquely hellish scene.

Lieutenant Boyle had been strung up above the cage by the patriotic hangings that had been above the judge’s stand, his stomach gutted, organs spilling out. Sergeant Pembry had been on the floor beside the cage, his face a mess of blood and flesh. Lecter was gone. Boyle’s gun had been missing. The alert had gone out that the prisoner was missing and armed. No-one had known how Lecter had left the room, the building, and not gone past them, which meant that he could still be in the building. But Lecter had also stripped the bed, so officers were sent to make sure he hadn’t fashioned a rope to escape out of a window. It was believed that Pembry had gotten a shot at Lecter before he had run, which was why Pembry had not been displayed like Boyle; the shots had alerted those downstairs, and Lecter could possibly have been hit. And it was then that one of the officer’s realised the Sergeant Pembry was still alive. The ambulance arrived and the paramedics took over the care of Pembry.

Pembry had been wheeled into the elevator on a gurney, and Krendler and couple of officers had accompanied the paramedics. Krendler had radioed to his colleagues; the top three floors and the main stairwell had been secured. It had been believed that Lecter could be on the second floor, until blood had dripped down from the roof of the elevator onto the pristine cover they had had over Pembry.

They had believed then, that Hannibal Lecter was hiding on the roof of the elevator, and that he had been hit by the bullet Pembry had managed to fire, hence the amount of blood dripping through the elevator roof. As the ambulance had left with Pembry, the SWAT team had moved in. They had stopped the lift at the ground floor, and the doors the floor above had been opened, so that the officers could look down at the elevator roof. The figure on the elevator roof had been wearing Lecter’s prison uniform, and had been lying very still, gun in hand. They had ordered Lecter to put his hands on his head. He hadn’t moved. They had shot him in the leg. He still hadn’t moved. The officers on the ground floor moved into the elevator, and had cautiously opened up the roof. The body on the roof of the elevator had fallen down, so that he had been hanging half into the elevator, upside down, dead arms swinging. It had not been Hannibal Lecter.

It was Sergeant Pembry. His face had been cut off.

Which only meant one thing; that Lecter had been rolled straight out of the courthouse on a gurney, and put in the back of an ambulance, wearing Pembry’s uniform, and wearing Pembry’s face.

***

Clarice and Jack arrive to the courthouse amongst a whirlwind of SWAT, forensics, FBI agents, cops and press.

Lecter has been gone for at least thirty minutes. There has been no word from the paramedics that had taken him, believing the breathing body to be that of a hideously injured and suffering Pembry. The ambulance has not arrived at the hospital. It is not hard to imagine why that is.

Krendler is furious. Clarice and Jack do what they can to assist, provide information. They send word to the Baltimore department and State Hospital to be on high alert, to warn them that Lecter could be there within fourteen hours, attempting to break in to get to Graham. Lecter will have to drive if he wants to get anywhere; the Memphis airport and public services are also on high alert.

Jack's pacing Krendler’s office, hand on the back of his head. Krendler clearly does not want them here, but he needs them in case he needs any insight or advice, and so they have been told to stay in his office whilst forensics do their job in the courtroom. Jack hates that, Clarice knows. She hates it too.

Jack has been silent for at least ten minutes, but Clarice knows he is thinking, assessing the situations of both here and back in Baltimore, how Lecter will move forwards from here, and how this all affects the _Buffalo Bill Case_ and the reputations of every officer involved in bringing Lecter here and letting him escape right under their noses. Clarice remains silent and lets him think.

She is lost in her own thoughts, her own doubts, her own fears. How could this have possibly happened? Now Lecter is free, will he return for Graham? Will he decide to take revenge on Chilton, on Jack, on Price and Zeller? She daren’t consider that he could come after her. He could, but she hopes that he won’t. She hopes he likes her enough, respects her enough to leave her alone, as he has left others alone. She hopes he would consider it rude to come after her now after everything. That is what she hopes, but maybe that is all it is, denial and trying to convince herself she is safe, when she knows she will likely be no safer than the rest of them. And alongside all that doubt and those questions, she cannot shake the thought that Catherine Martin has less than two days left. She cannot quell the frustrations on the _Buffalo Bill Case,_ and to Lecter for killing those men so brutally and leaving before he could provide any more answers. Lecter had told her she needed to learn to see the facts before her, that were to him as clear as day, but she has seen what he has done to Lieutenant Boyle, and she has already had more than enough of seeing as Lecter sees.

She is abruptly jolted from her thoughts when a familiar generic ringtone strikes up, shrill and loud. Jack startles too, stopping and pulling his phone out of his pocket and looking at the caller ID.

She looks at him, questioning with her eyes whether she should leave. Jack minutely shakes his head. He frowns.

“It’s Clark from the State Hospital,” He says, his severe expression increasing further as he answers the call.

“Clark?”

Jack’s frown deepens as Clarice watches, unable to hear Clark’s words and only hearing Jack’s side of the conversation; “You have to be…no, Clark, you did the right thing, I just cannot believe his goddamn timing. He what? Jesus.”

Jack falls silent, and Clarice can see in the serious rigid posture and the concern on his face that he is in some deep, conflicting debate with himself. Clarice wonders what the hell Clark is calling about.

“He does?” Jack says into the phone finally, “And if we refuse? Right, ok. Damn it. Let’s do it. Yes, do it, Clark. He wants to speak to Starling too?” Jack glances at her, and Clarice frowns at him in confusion. “Fine, I give my permission. I’m putting you on loudspeaker Clark, so that Starling can hear him too.”

Jack gives her another apologetic look as he selects the loudspeaker on the call.

She is brought into the conversation in the midst of Clark babbling away on the other end of the line. It sounds like he is walking, and very flustered. There are loud voices in the background.

“I’m sorry Agent Crawford,” Clark apologises, “We wanted to check with you, because we have no idea of the protocol. Dr Chilton isn’t here, and if we had left him…Dr Chilton gave us orders when they were first brought here that they had to be kept alive. We had to intervene. He kept threatening to kill himself.”

“It’s alright Clark. You have done the right thing. Where is he now?”

“I’m heading towards the cell. We have him restrained.”

Clarice assumes what is going on, and asks, “Can’t you just keep him restrained and not give in to his demands?”

“We thought that too, Agent Starling,” Clark responds, “But he says he can’t be contained forever.”

“Ok, Clark,” Jack comes to a decision “When you get there, put him on and let him say what he has to say.”

“I’m here,” Clark says after a moment of quiet, “I’m putting him on now.”

The next thing they hear is Will Graham’s voice, “Jack?” Graham’s voice asks, almost hesitantly.

Clarice looks at Jack. Jack stares at the phone.

Finally, Jack gives up, “Hello Will,” He says. There is a weight to his shoulders that only Clarice can see. But she is more than certain, knowing Graham, that he will hear it in his voice. “What is it that you want?”

“I don’t see or hear from you in a whole year, Jack, and you completely bypass asking me how I am? I have been doing terribly, quite frankly, and not once have you asked me.”

“I am sorry, Will,” Jack sits heavily in Krendler’s desk chair, “But we thought it best that I keep my distance during your incarceration.”

“You know, even after everything, it is good to hear your voice. I have missed you, Jack, despite everything.”

“Despite everything,” Jack repeats, agrees. Maybe it is good for Jack, to hear Will speaking to him too after so long.

“And yet, you still would not come.”

“You have threatened to harm yourself, Will,” Jack says, avoiding Graham’s hurt statement, “What is it that you are so desperate to say?”

“You clearly want to keep this brief, Jack,” Graham’s voice is quiet, wounded, “I can keep it brief. Is Starling there too?”

“I am here, Mr Graham,” Clarice supplies, to stop Jack from dwelling in the guilt too long. “What is it that you want to say?”

“Can I speak to Hannibal, please?”

“That is not possible, Will,” Jack says, “Not with the protocols involved. It will never receive permission.”

“Protocol?” Graham asks, “Are you sure it’s about protocol?” There is a pause, and then Graham’s knowing, unsettling tone; “Or is it about the fact that he is no longer there?”

Clarice whole body chills, like she has been doused by a bucket of ice water. She sees Jack’s shoulders stiffen, his expression tighten.

“He _has_ gotten himself out?” Graham clarifies. He is asking, but he sounds like he knows that he isn’t wrong. “He’s gone. Right?”

“Mr Graham he is not…” Clarice’s reply is cut through by Jack.

“I don’t care how or why you know,” Jack snaps, temper and nerves frayed to the point of breaking, “But Hannibal is never getting in to the State Hospital. I will make damn sure of that, and we will catch him in the act.”

“And you, Clarice?” Graham does not sound concerned, and that in itself is concerning. He doesn’t even seem surprised that Hannibal has escaped. “What do you think?”

“He has left you behind, Mr Graham,” Clarice clarifies heatedly, hoping to at least knock his self-assurance, “He has gone without you. He won’t be coming for you, and if he does, he will be caught.”

“Oh Clarice,” Graham sounds disappointed, and _amused_ of all things. “Whatever made you think that I required saving?”

Jack leapt up instantly from his chair, “Wait!”

“I called to say goodbye, Jack,” Graham says on a breath, before they hear an ear-splitting scream that is not made by Graham. There are shouts of panic and horror. There are more screams. There is a crashing sound that can only be the sound of the phone falling to the floor. The sounds of pure chaos ensue.

“Oh my god,” Clarice gasps.

Jack looks positively sick, his eyes wide in utter disbelief. “We have to go back to Baltimore,” Jack says in a rush that is not much more than a wrecked whisper. “Now.”

They have to go up to the courtroom to inform Krendler, and each step towards the crime scene fills Clarice with more and more dread. Dread about Lecter, dread about Graham, dread about Buffalo Bill, dread about the godforsaken mess they have gotten themselves into.

They are still cleaning up the mess of Lieutenant Boyle’s body from above the cage that Hannibal Lecter stood in talking to her only hours ago. Clarice tries not to look at it.

“Starling,” Krendler barks, before she or Jack can say a word, “Come here.”

They both go up into the cage where Krendler is standing. As soon as they reach him, he stabs his finger towards the plastic desk. “Does this mean anything to you?”

Clarice frowns at his accusatory tone and looks down. On the table top sit the drawings she brought Lecter, but that is not what he is pointing at.

He is pointing at a pencil sketch that Clarice has never seen before, because it is brand new. Lecter must have drawn it just before his escape.

It is a drawing of her. The detail is incredible, her features drawn entirely from memory.

It is a drawing of her, and she is holding a lamb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left to go! Kudos to anybody who noticed the Hannibal - Krendler reference ;)


	6. Chapter 6

They had found Lecter’s stolen ambulance hidden in a private car park. The paramedics were all found dead inside. Lecter had also killed a civilian and stolen his clothes and money. There has been absolutely no sign of Lecter for the last ten hours.

Will Graham had escaped the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane by tricking the staff into making a phone call to Jack Crawford. He had been restrained to a chair, and several staff had been inside the cell with him whilst one had held the phone to his ear. He had already broken free from one arm restraint without any of the staff knowing before the call was even made, which had made it easy for him to grab Clark, who had been holding the phone, and bite his wrist open. Using the moments of shock that followed, he had managed to rip himself free from the other restraint before any of the remaining staff could even move to re-restrain him, or defend themselves. Three staff members were dead, several others injured. Those who had survived told of Graham being almost feral in the viciousness of his attack. The security that had been placed on the Baltimore State Hospital had been to stop Hannibal Lecter getting in, not in any anticipation of having to stop Will Graham from getting out. And he did get out.

Graham and Lecter’s dogs have been moved from Zeller’s house and put in a secure facility. It is assumed that as long as the dogs are locked up, that Graham has not and will not go far. Despite this, he has not so far been sighted, traced or found since the escape.

And to make matters even worse than they already are, there have been no new leads on Buffalo Bill, either, and Catherine Martin is running desperately out of time.

Clarice has holed herself up in in Jack’s office at Behavioural Sciences. Jack has been kept on the hunt for Lecter and Graham and the _Buffalo Bill Case_ by Krendler in an attempt at clean up and co-operation. Clarice has been reassigned. She should be working on new cases, like her superiors have told her to do, but for once Clarice is not following orders.

She is pouring over the copy of the _Buffalo Bill Case_ file that she had given to Hannibal Lecter during one of their meetings at the State Hospital, which he had then handed back to her the night he had escaped. She is looking for something, anything that she has missed. Lecter had told her that the answers were all right here in the pages of her file, and that she just can’t see them. She wants to see them, she needs to see them.

_Do you see?_

She shakes her head and out of her focus when there is a knock on the office door.

“Clarice?” Ardelia is there, two cups of coffee in her hands. “I think you need a break.”

Clarice sighs and nods. She knows Ardelia will make her take a break, whether she wants one or not, because Ardelia is clearly concerned for her. Clarice is grateful for it, as she is very much in need of the company of her best friend.

Ardelia sits down on the other side of the desk, and places the coffees on a couple of plain grey coasters.  

“Thank you,” Clarice smiles, and picks up the cup, taking a sip and letting the taste flood her mouth. She hopes it will give her a sorely needed energy boost.

They drink in silence for five minutes or so, before Ardelia says, “Lecter could be anywhere by now.”

Clarice does not miss the concern in her voice.

“I don’t think he will come after me.”

Ardelia arches an eyebrow, “Why not?”

“Because I think, after everything, he would consider such a thing rude.” Clarice sees Ardelia’s confused and unconvinced eyebrow raise even higher. “I know that makes little sense, and I can’t really explain it."

She honestly cannot explain it, and yet she knows it to be true. She knows it, and Lecter knows it.

“And Graham?”

“Graham might,” Clarice admits, “He could. But again, I think for now, he won’t. He has far bigger priorities than me. He made that pretty clear.” She picks, frustrated, at the papers in front of her, “It’s not even them that concern me most. It’s Bill. Without them and their assistance, Catherine Martin is as good as dead. I have every faith we will catch Bill without them, but not in time to save Catherine.”

Ardelia reaches out and squeezes Clarice’s wrist. “It’s not your fault it worked out like this, Clarice. You did more than enough for that case. And when they do catch Bill, it will be down to the work you’ve done.”

“I know,” Clarice says miserably.

“So maybe you should let them take it from here.”

“I would,” Clarice rubs at her temple with her fingers, “It’s just…” She sighs heavily in frustration, “The thing is, Lecter said everything we need to catch Bill is in these pages.” She taps the papers in front of her.

“It sounds like Dr Lecter said a lot of things,” Ardelia reminds her.

“I know, but, I think that he is right. Bill is right here in these pages, Ardelia! And I can’t let it go! We just need to look in these pages to find him! We just need to see what Lecter can see!”

Ardelia watches her for a moment, before she takes another mouthful of her coffee, sets it down and ties back her dark, curly hair.

“Then let’s find him.”

Clarice cannot help but crack a smile, “Really?”

“Really,” Ardelia says, “I might not be on the case or entirely up to speed, but two pairs of eyes are better than one, right?” She moves her chair around the desk so that they can sit side by side and look over the case file at the same time.

They sit in silent concentration for fifteen minutes or so, looking at page after page, before Ardelia picks one out.

“Is this Lecter’s handwriting?” She asks.

“Two pairs of eyes are _so much_ better than one,” Clarice tells her friend gratefully, as she eagerly takes the paper out of Ardelia’s hands as Ardelia grins back at her. “Thank you.”

It is a copy of the map that Jack had showed her back when the body of Jodie Hopkins had been found on a riverbank; a map with markings of where all the bodies of Bill’s victims had been found, on various riverbanks over a fairly large geographical area. Right in the corner of the map, written in pencil so faintly that Clarice had missed it in her previous flicking through of the file, are words written in Lecter’s elegant handwriting;

_‘Clarice, doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar? Hannibal Lecter.’_

Clarice reads it out to Ardelia.

“Desperately random?” Ardelia asks, “What does he mean?”

“Desperately random,” Clarice repeats, thinks, “Does he mean that Bill is desperate for us to think that it is random? That would mean that it is a manufactured randomness. So, it is not random at all, maybe? Like there’s some pattern here.”

“But if there was a pattern, the computers would have nailed it,” Ardelia points out. “The bodies were even found in random order, weren’t they?”

“All but one were found in order of disappearance," Clarice tells her. "All but one.” She pauses, her mind working furiously, putting pieces together, “It was made random because of one of the female victims. The one he weighted down.” She rifles through the papers, before handing one of the victim profiles to Ardelia urgently. “Fiona Bimmel, from Belvedere, Ohio. She was the first girl taken, but the third body found. Why?”

“She didn’t drift,” Ardelia answers, her eyes lighting up too, her voice speeding up with the realisation, “He weighted her down. All the other bodies travelled long distances downriver, but she didn’t. And she was the first.”

“Exactly. And what did Lecter say Bill does? He covets. And how do we start to covet? By coveting what we see every day.”

“Oh my god, Clarice,” Ardelia looks at her, eyes wide with the excitement of discovering new information, “He knew her.”

***

Jack did not even question Clarice on why she had not left the _Buffalo Bill Case_ alone like Krendler had told her to do, and it only took a quick explanation of their findings for Jack to give permission for Clarice and Ardelia to follow up their lead. Though Clarice was surprised to meet barely any resistance from Jack to their suggestion, she assumed that it was either because the man was tired, or wanted to humour her by allowing her this one last attempt. It has gotten to the point where any evidence is welcome, because time is running out. And even if, as they suspect, Buffalo Bill will be long gone from the scene of his first murder, they can at least hopefully track down his identity and find out a little more information about his past, which would help the investigation on its way. And maybe help them find Catherine Martin before it is too late.

Clarice and Ardelia arrive in Belvedere several hours later. They decide to save time by splitting up and taking different routes of enquiry. Whilst Ardelia follows up a couple of Fiona Bimmel’s listed friends and close contacts in town, Clarice pays a visit to Fiona Bimmel’s father.

“Mr Bimmel?” She asks when a stocky, bearded man answers the door.

“That’s me,” Mr Bimmel says. He has a kind face, but sad eyes, reflecting the grief of a father even after a year has passed.

Clarice holds up her ID for him to inspect. “My name is Agent Clarice Starling, I’m with the FBI. We spoke on the phone this morning?”

“Yes,” Mr Bimmel nods, opens the door wider to allow her inside, “Please, call me Trevor.”

“Thank you, Trevor,” Clarice steps inside, cleans her shoes for a moment on the doormat, not wishing to make any misdeed to the man’s hospitality of speaking to her on such short notice. “For agreeing to talk to me, and letting me take a look around.”

“Sure,” Trevor Bimmel says, “I don’t have anything new to tell you, though. The police have been back here so many times already. None of them come with answers, just more questions.”

“I am sorry to have to ask you some more,” Clarice apologises sincerely.

Trevor's understanding smile doesn't quite reach his eyes, “Its ok. If it means helping to catch the bastard that took her from me then…” he takes a deep, steadying breath, the pain evident on his face. “I’ll do what I can. But I don’t know why or how it was my Fiona. All I know is, she went out for the day, seeing about a job she had an interview for. She messaged me to say she was heading home, but she never came back.” He pulls a tattered tissue out of his pocket and dabs quickly at his eyes whilst he leads her towards the bottom of the staircase. He thinks she can’t see him. She does not mention it.

“Her bedroom is how she left it,” Trevor says, stowing the tissue when he turns back around to face her. “It’s upstairs, door to the left. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you Trevor. I won’t be long.”

Fiona Bimmel’s room is a typical room of a young adult; pastel pinks and blues on the bedspread, on the feature wall, repainted on retro furniture, giving the room a calming, pretty, vintage chic. It is the most nicely decorated room in the Bimmel house. And it makes Clarice feel terribly sad, as all murder victims rooms do. The room is exactly as Fiona left it a year ago, like it is still waiting for her to come home, very much like her father wishes she was.

Clarice carefully inspects the room, picking items up but ensuring to put them back exactly where they came from. She looks at the pictures stuck up on the walls, magazine posters of fashionable women, and sketches of dresses and coats. It makes Clarice’s stomach twist, knowing what has become of Fiona, that large pieces of her skin have been taken to be made into a suit, much like the sketches on her wall. There is a sewing kit, bursting with cotton and scraps of material under her desk, and Clarice pulls it out. She lifts one of the plastic layers out of the box, and then another, until all the sewing box segments are scattered all about her; surrounded by items used to sew fabric together, like Fiona’s skin has supposedly been sewn to the other victim’s; Max Jenning, Joseph Lowoski, Ella Roberts, Samuel Thackery, Jodie Hopkins.

She sighs, struggling with the mental image, and is about to return all the layers back into the sewing box, when she notices something in the bottom of the box. The silky lining of the box is loose at the bottom, and when Clarice picks at it, the piece at the base lifts up, having been purposefully cut to lift up, leaving a secret pocket at the bottom of the box. There is a collection of things in there, things that were private to Fiona and that she was obviously trying to hide or keep to herself. There are a couple of old scribbled phone numbers, a handwritten poem, and there are a couple of printed photographs. Clarice picks them out and looks at them. They are lingerie shots of Fiona. She is posing by some long curtains, curvaceous and soft-skinned, a laugh in her eyes. There is one of her standing by a wall, her removed shirt held up to her face, and one of her on her front, facing the camera, lying on a bed that is clearly not hers. She looks teasing, bold. Clarice turns them over to inspect the backs, but only one gives anything away. A small scribbled note on the back; _To be you is to be beautiful. J._

Clarice blinks. She wonders what it means. Did this ‘J’ mean that Fiona was beautiful, and just had a poetic way of phrasing it, or did the phrasing have intention? The intention of a man who wanted to create a suit of skin to become someone else?

Her pondering is cut short when her phone rings.

She answers the call. “Ardelia, hey.”

“Hey. You got anything?”

Clarice looks down at the pictures in her hand, at the inscription on the back.

“I might do. I’m not sure. I found some lingerie photos Fiona Bimmel had hidden in her sewing kit. The person who took them had given them to her with the message ‘To be you is to be beautiful’ and it’s signed with a ‘J’.”

“From the killer, you think?”

“I think it could be very likely. I mean, Bill knew her, right? And if this was him, it means that his real name starts with a J.”

“Not Louis Friend, then,” Ardelia scoffs. “Fool’s gold indeed.”

“I haven’t found anything else yet, though,” Clarice admits, “I need to finish searching. Any luck at your end?”

“Possibly,” Ardelia says, “I spoke to one of Fiona’s closest friends, Stacey Jessop. She said that Fiona had been really excited about the job interview she had headed to, that it wasn’t like her to just up and vanish, and then told me about the search for her. But what interested me was when I asked if Stacey knew if Fiona had been seeing anyone, if she had any close male friends. Stacey laughed, and said that if Fiona had had a guy, that Stacey would have known. She said that the pair of them spent a lot of their free time together, or else Fiona was at her sewing or dressmaking clubs. She said that sewing was Fiona’s life, her favourite hobby, and that she often took sewing work from local people for a fee on the side. I asked if Stacey remembered anyone in particular that Fiona had worked for. She mentioned a few names, but the one that stood out to me was that apparently not long before Fiona died she had been doing a fair bit of alteration work for an old lady called Mrs Lippman.”

“That’s interesting,” Clarice says. Maybe Mrs Lippman had been Fiona’s a decoy, an excuse, whilst she had met with Bill, or ‘J’, in secret. “Did you get an address for Mrs Lippman?”

“Sure did.”

“I could check it out after I’ve finished here.”

“That would be good. I still have a couple of Fiona’s friends to speak to, Stacey said she would gather some for me.”

“Do you have a contact number for Stacey?”

“I’ll send that over too.”

“Thanks.”

“Keep me updated.”

“Sure. Meet you back at the car in a couple of hours?” Clarice checked her watch, “Say at five?”

“See you then.”

Clarice packs away Fiona’s sewing kit as she had found it, carefully places all but the inscribed photograph back in their secret compartment. She tucks the single photograph into her pocket. And then her phone rings again.

“Starling,” Clarice says when she picks up.

“Clarice, it’s Jack. We know who he is. And where he is. We are on our way there as I speak.”

Clarice feels her stomach plummet and then quickly lift. She is glad that they have finally tracked him down, that they will finally catch him, but still feels a disappointment that she is not there, a part of the operation.

“Where?” she asks. She needs to know.

“Calumet City, edge of Chicago. We'll be there in about forty-five minutes.”

Clarice frowns. There has been no mention of that location at all within the investigation. No connection to the locations of the murders.

“That’s great news, Sir,” she says, and means it. “May I ask how you found him?”

“One of Krendler’s bright sparks thought to check back on Customs records for shipping of Death’s Head Moths…”

 _Acherontia styx_ , Clarice thinks, with Hannibal Lecter’s correctional tone.

“Turns out there was a carton stopped at customs two years ago at LAX. It had come from Suriname, and it was filled with live caterpillars. The addressee was a ‘Jame Gumb’. We traced him from there. Bill’s name is Jamie Gumb, but he has also gone by Jame Gumb and John Grant. We are heading to the associated address.”

Clarice tells him what she has found; the photographs and the message from ‘J’. It only confirms her theory of Fiona having known Bill, and also adds to Jack’s confidence that he is about to find and arrest the right man.

Clarice wants to offer to head to Chicago, because she cannot help but want to be there, after everything. But she knows the arrest will be happening within the next hour, that they will want to get to him as soon as possible. After all she has given to hunt Buffalo Bill down, she will have to miss out on actually catching him.

She tells Jack instead about Ardelia’s questioning of Fiona’s friends, and that she is about to go and track down Mrs Lippman. It sounds fairly insignificant, considering Krendler and Jack have found Bill and are about to arrest him, but she knows that the work she and Ardelia are doing will help them paint the bigger picture, and figure out the connections between Bill and his first ‘skin suit’ victim.

Because Fiona was not the _first_ victim, Clarice must not forget. Benjamina Raspail was. And there could potentially have been more killed by Bill in between those two that they do not even know about. Maybe the arrest of Buffalo Bill – or Jame Gumb, Jamie Gumb, John Grant…whatever his name is – would reveal more than just the seven that they know of. It is what reminds her that the hunt, the case, is not over yet.

“I can link him to Bimmel,” She finishes, “By the end of the day, Ardelia and I will have that evidence collected for you, Sir.”

“Thank you, Clarice,” Jack says, “No-one is going to forget that without you, we would never have found him. I won’t let them forget it.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Clarice says, feeling a little less disappointed about having to miss out on the action. “Let me know once you get him. Let me know if Catherine Martin is alive.”

“I will,” Jack promises, “I will be in touch soon.”

Clarice calls Ardelia back to fill her in on everything that Jack has told her, and then searches the rest of the Fiona Bimmel's room, but finds nothing else that connects Bimmel to Jame Gumb. She takes the photograph back out of her pocket, and looks again at the message on the back.

_To be you is to be beautiful. J._

She does not need to be there for Gumb’s arrest to have done her part, she assures herself.

 _Don’t let their approval smother your talents, Starling, or it will clip your wings._ She remembers what Will Graham said to her. _Or maybe you will start to crack and shatter, but that is ok, because then you can come back as somebody else. Anybody else._

_To be you is to be beautiful. J._

Fiona Bimmel was the first that Jame Gumb wanted to become. Hopefully Jack and Krendler will make it before Catherine Martin can become Gumb’s last.

***

He wants to be many people, every person that he can be. He wants to own them, become them, be them in every way.

But he cannot help but wonder if this one, this Catherine Martin, is worth it. He wonders whether he even wants to be her, now. Because she is a menace.

The evil creature has captured his Precious. Tricked her and taunted her and managed to pull her down into that filthy hole using the basket he uses to lower the lotion.

She has Precious in her hands. She is holding Precious in her cruel hands and is threatening to do her harm unless he does as she says.

He hates her.

He looks down from the edge of the hole and yanks the rope so that the bucket jumps in front of her face.

“Put her in the bucket,” he orders again. He is worried for his Precious. His poor Precious is whimpering.

“Get me a phone and lower it down,” the girl demands.

“Precious,” he whispers to his little dog, “Are you alright?”

“I think she broke her leg when she fell down,” Catherine Martin warns, “She needs a vet.”

He is going to kill her for this.

“You put my dog in the bucket.”

“I will hurt her more. I will!”

“Don’t you hurt my dog,” he shrieks down at the barbaric witch, points at her threateningly, “Don’t you hurt my dog!”

“Get me a phone!”

“I will come down there and I will snap your fucking neck…” he hisses.

And then his doorbell rings.

The mechanism he has rigged means that he can hear it from down here in the basement; the large bell on the wall opposite him is ringing.

He and Catherine Martin stare at each other for a moment.

He decides suddenly that he does not think she has the guts to kill his dog. He will gut her instead. He won’t even wear her, add her to his collection. He will just kill her.

Kill her and destroy her and dump her. It is what she deserves.

He does not want to become this.

He abandons her. He lets her scream after him, she can scream all she wants, the basement is soundproofed so whoever is at the door will never hear her.

Though it hurts to leave Precious in that creature’s hands, he will have to get Precious back later.

Right now he has to deal with whoever is at his door.

***

When nobody answers the door, Krendler shouts a warning that they will enter the house with force. Jack cannot help but imagine what they will discover in the house; he believes that nothing can ever be as gruesome as Hannibal’s work, but hell, he has been proved wrong in the past on other things. He knows that somewhere in this building stands a suit of skin, made up from six different people, and a captured girl about to become the seventh. Unless he has killed her already.

Jack has his gun in his hand. He looks to Krendler for instruction, because this is Krendler’s show to run now, not his.

“We’re going in,” Krendler orders.

Jack nods.

They step back to let the SWAT team deal with the door. It crashes open.

“FBI! Everybody down!”

They all rush inside, weapons at the ready.

And almost instantly, Jack senses that something is not right.

The house immediately seems too empty. Too quiet. Too unoccupied.

He assesses the hallway suspiciously, as Krendler shouts “Clear!” and the SWAT team spread and check each and every room in the house. The longer the search, and the more shouts of ‘Clear!’ reach them, the realisation builds and it dawns on Jack that they will not find anybody here.

Jame Gumb is not here.

Nobody is here.

“There’s no-one here, Jack,” Krendler hisses, before slamming his fist against the hallway door. “God damn it!”

Jack should be angry too. He should be disappointed and concerned that their investigation is now still on-going, and not over as they thought it would be. That Buffalo Bill is not captured. That Catherine Martin will likely now have no chance.

But Jack cannot feel all of that, because all he feels instead is a rapidly increasing sense of foreboding.

He thinks of what Clarice told him of what she has found in Belvedere, in Fiona Bimmel’s room, and suddenly he realises, with sickening dread, that they have overlooked the obvious.

They were never going to find Jame Gumb here. But he knows where he most likely will be. He knows, with the experience of a man who lost first Miriam Lass, and then Will Graham, that someone else is going to find Gumb first.

“Clarice,” he whispers.

***

Clarice was expecting an elderly lady to answer the door, so is surprised when a middle-aged man opens it instead.

He opens the door wide enough to fit himself in the space, rather than peering around the edge of the door suspiciously like a lot of people tend to do.

He is relatively handsome, with broad shoulders and big hands and blonde hair. He is tall too, and he looks down at Clarice with surprise, even as she covers her own surprised response to the unexpected occupant.

“Can I help you ma’am?” He asks, his voice low and soft, heavy accented, and terribly polite. He looks a little wary of her, despite his size.

“Good afternoon,” She says, “I am sorry to bother you. My name is Agent Clarice Starling, FBI.” She holds up her ID. His eyes jump to the ID and then jerk back up at her. He tenses, but then, many do when faced with authority at their door. “I’m looking for Mrs Lippman, or any of her family?”

He gives a quick shake of his head. “No. Sorry. The Lippmans don’t live here anymore.” He moves, as if to start closing the door again. “Sorry I can’t be of help.”

“Actually, Sir,” Clarice says, eager for answers. If Jack is arresting Buffalo Bill right at that moment, and she cannot be there to help, then she can at least make sure she has concrete evidence connecting Bill to Fiona Bimmel. “May I ask you some questions?”

He stops abruptly. Now he starts to look a little suspicious of her. “What about?”

“I am investigating the death of Fiona Bimmel. She was from this area, and killed about a year ago.”

“Ok?” He responds.

“May I ask your name?”

“Jack Gordon.”

“Do you know Mrs Lippman, Mr Gordon?”

“I knew of her, she didn’t really know me,” he says, “The only time she ever really saw me was when I got the house off her. She’s dead, now though. So I hear.”

“Ok,” Clarice makes a mental note of his answers, as whipping out a notebook or dictaphone to take notes always makes people even more wary. “Well, Fiona used to work for Mrs Lippman. Did you know Fiona by any chance?”

“No,” he says immediately. “I know what happened to her of course, we all do round here. It was in the papers.”

“Right,” Clarice says, a little disheartened. Jack will be arresting Buffalo Bill, and Clarice will be returning to Baltimore empty handed if she doesn’t find something soon. “Well, I am sorry to have bothered you, Mr Gordon…”

“Mrs Lippman had a son?” Jack Gordon’s eyes light up and he looks pleased that he might be able to provide her something useful. “I’ve got his card here, someplace. You are welcome to come in and wait whilst I look for it.”

“That would be great, thank you,” she says, grateful that she has picked up another lead, and that this visit has not been a total waste of time.

He stands back and gestures into the house. She steps inside and he closes the door behind her, and then leads her past a couple of dated and sparse, but tidy, rooms into the small kitchen.

“Do you happen to remember the name of Mrs Lippman’s son?” she asks, taking in the room. The kitchen is also out-dated, but unlike the other rooms at the front of the house, it looks used and unclean. There are newspapers scattered all over the small round table, and there is spilled food and dirty pans piled on the stove.

“Uhh…” Jack Gordon deliberates, stopping to rifle through one of the kitchen drawers. “Jamie. I think.”

Clarice feels a thrill at discovering that Mrs Lippman’s son could very well be the ‘J’ that had written the note on the back of Fiona Bimmel’s photograph. She does not let on, however, and watches as Mr Gordon gives up on that drawer, and moves to another drawer, nearer the door on the other side of the room, and Clarice follows him cautiously further into the room. She is not quite sure why, but she suddenly feels uncomfortable. The feeling is building inside of her the longer she spends in the man’s presence. She is looking forward to leaving the house. There is something about it that she does not like.

“Are you close to catching somebody, do you think?” Jack Gordon asks, a little stiltedly, very curiously, pauses in his search and looks at her. “Whoever killed the Bimmel girl?”

Clarice’s gaze catches on the newspapers on the table, which all have had articles cut out of them, and sitting on top of them is a sewing kit. She looks back at Jack Gordon. He doesn’t look the sewing type. Instinct truly kicks in, then, overpowering her initial eagerness to pursue the lead. She realises she has been reckless.

She also realises that she has not given him an answer. “Yes, we think so.” Almost unconsciously, she starts to consider her exits.

“So the FBI has learned something?” Gordon says, takes a stack of business cards out of his drawer and shuffles through them. “You know, the police around here don’t seem to have the first clue.”

Now that the sewing kit and her suspicion have caught her attention, Clarice’s assessing gaze wanders as Jack Gordon remains occupied. She notices something stuck to the open lid of the sewing kit, a cut-out from a magazine, presumably from some film premiere or celebrity event, because it is just a headline that states; _Who are they wearing?_

And then, then, she catches movement across the room. There is something fluttering in one of the dark windows. She recognises it immediately, because she has looked at pictures and diagrams of them a lot since starting on the Buffalo Bill case; _Acherontia styx_. Her heart begins to speed in its beat, her stomach drops.

“I mean, do you have, like, a description?” he glances at her, “Fingerprints? Anything like that?”

She had been so sure that Jack was arresting Buffalo Bill in Chicago, so sure that she was missing out on something elsewhere, that she failed to see what was standing right before her eyes.

Jack Gordon. Jame Gumb. Jamie Gumb. John Grant. The initials match up. Hannibal Lecter’s physical description of the man they were hunting for; tall, blue-eyed and fair.

This is Buffalo Bill. The man before her is Buffalo Bill. And Jack and Krendler are in a different state, and aren’t going to be finding or arresting anybody, because Buffalo Bill is right here, standing in the same room as her, and she is all alone.

She tries not to let on that she knows, even as she prepares to grab for her gun.

“No,” She lies, “No we don’t.”

Jack Gordon – Jame Gumb, _Buffalo Bill_ – holds up a card between two fingers, “Here’s that number.”

“Thank you, Mr Gordon,” she says, but it sounds stiff even to her own ears.

Gordon does not move to give it to her. His eyes flick to the moth fluttering in the window. He looks back at her. His expression hardens for a moment, but then it cracks, and he lifts a hand to cough a sudden laugh into it, and it takes her totally by surprise.

“Oh, that’s no problem,” he says. And then suddenly he jolts, but she has been waiting for it. She snatches up her gun out of its holster and levels it at him.

“Freeze!” she orders, “Put your hands over your head!”

Buffalo Bill does so. He raises his hands, the pile of cards cascading from between his fingers to scatter across the floor. He is watching her closely, a self-assured smile creeping on to his face. She feels threatened, because she is in an unfamiliar building, with a serial killer who knows it very well. But she has the upper hand here, she has the gun, the advantage, so she does not let him know how much the revelation – her naïve stupidity – has unsettled her.

“Turn around,” she demands next, “Spread your legs. Put your hands behind your back, thumbs up.”

Buffalo Bill spins, as ordered, but before she can do anything to prevent it, yelling “Freeze!” again to no effect, he moves, swerving forward and around the doorframe, as Clarice fires and puts a bullet in the wall where he had just been standing.

It is her that freezes then, only for a moment, but it is long enough for her to panic over how she is getting out of this one. And then, finally, the adrenaline kicks in, and she moves, pursues. Because she cannot leave now, not when Catherine Martin’s life is hopefully still at stake.

She does not run. She does what her father would do. She stands.

She does not run. She does what Jack Crawford would do. She does not back down.

She does not run. She does what Will Graham would do. She moves forwards into the lair of a serial killer.

She does not run. She does what Hannibal Lecter would do. She gets ready to fight to the death.

She darts into the next room, gun at the ready, but Buffalo Bill has long since left it. She does not know where he is, but she is ready for him. She has to be wary, she has to be cautious. She has to win, this time.

Her heart is thrumming in her chest, her breath is held, but it is her heart that drives her on, and her breath that reminds her to refuse to lose.

He cannot get away. Not this time.

She moves down a hallway, dead quiet until a floorboard creaks under her foot. Dead quiet, until she hears the sound of faint yelling as she passes a thick set door to her right.

She does not hesitate. She opens it, closes it behind her, and descends down towards the basement. She can hear that the screams are from a female, and hopes it is Catherine Martin.

She is halfway down the stairs when the light cuts out. There are no windows in the basement, or if there are, they are covered. She is standing in pitch blackness. 

Clarice reaches into her pocket and pulls out her phone. She rings Ardelia, but does not speak to her, she just lets it run once she knows Ardelia has answered it, turns the speaker down to its quietest setting. Ardelia is her closest ally, and the only one who knows where she is and can alert the police without Buffalo Bill hearing Clarice asking for help or giving an address.

Clarice turns the torch on her phone on, and the bright glaring light lights up the stairs in front of her. It is little consolation, because the reach of the beam is limited and she does not know if Buffalo Bill is behind her, or lying in wait in the shadows.

“Show yourself, Gumb!” She shouts for Ardelia’s benefit, so Ardelia knows how dire this situation is.

She spins when she hears a creak behind her.

She turns again, gun wavering only for a moment, when she hears a bang in another direction.

If she did not have her phone, she knows it would be disorientating, but she also knows that the glow of the phone is a beacon for Bill.

He could be anywhere, and can see her clearly, and she cannot see a thing.

***

He follows her, the FBI Agent. He waited in the house until he heard her use the basement door, and then he shut off the power, and now, now he follows her in the pitch black.

Her phone torch is on, which allows her to see directly in front of her, but she cannot see him. He knows how to keep to the shadows, blend into the dark like one of his moths, because he is versatile, he can be anything.

He sees her come face to face with his suit of many characters, where it hangs on its manikin torso, sees her be unable to hold in a shocked gasp at the sight of it, and he is pleased that it draws such a strong reaction from the agent who had, at first impression, seemed unflappable. But people can pretend to be something that they are not. And sometimes they become. And this agent, this Clarice Starling, so unflappable at first, is now fluttering her wings, helpless and stuck inside in the dark. He admires the way his moths flutter. He thinks he can admire this bird and her fight or flight reactions too. He sees her find the bath tub that an experimental body is breaking down in, soaking under his display of pinned up newspaper headlines that make him proud; _A third skinned body pulled from river; Buffalo Bill kills again; Bill skins fifth; Bill kills sixth._ He hears her breathing quicken. He reaches out towards the back of her head, and ducks away as she spins, shining her light behind her. He sees her swat free flying moths out of her face when they fly to the light she holds. He feels her getting more and more afraid. He can almost taste it.

Her gun remains steady, though, he has to give her that. Maybe she isn’t flapping so hard, after all. Maybe he can make her struggle. Maybe he can crush her little bones between his fingers.

Maybe he can become her, too. She is pretty, she is confident, she is strong willed. She would be a perfect addition to his collection. But maybe it is best to kill her soon, and besides, he has not had chance to moisten the skin with the lotion.

He does not kill her yet. He is enjoying toying with her. He follows her as she spins this way and that, moving towards the room with the pit, following the incessant racket of the infernal Catherine Martin.

“I’m here! In here! Help!” the stupid girl screeches so loud that it grates the eardrums.

Catherine Martin is not ever going to be a part of his suit. Why did he ever wish to become her?

“Where are you?” Agent Starling calls.

“Down here!”

He hopes Agent Starling will not see the pit and fall down it and land on Catherine Martin. Hard. But then the risk of her landing on Precious is too great, and he cannot risk it. Besides, he would rather kill Starling up here, with his bare hands or a bullet. 

Starling's phone lights the edges of the pit.

“Catherine Martin?” Starling asks. She sounds so hopeful. He does not know why she so wishes to save this wretched girl.

“Yes!” Catherine cries up at her.

Precious barks and he flinches. He wants to call out to her but he doesn’t. He needs to stay as quiet as a moth, and hide in the dark.

***

Clarice is so thrilled to see Catherine Martin alive that her fear dissipates a little. The girl looks traumatised, dirty and tear stained and wild at the bottom of a straight-sided pit dug down into the basement floor. Catherine has a whimpering, dirty little white dog that she holds to her chest like a lifeline, and the girl squints up at her under the sharp brightness of the phone light.

“I’m FBI,” Clarice tells her, hoping to provide some comfort even as her voice stays hushed and demanding. “You just have to be patient a little longer.”

“Patient?” Catherine screeches up at her, clearly and understandably hysterical.

Clarice shushes her urgently.

“You…you’ve got him, right?” Catherine asks, thankfully a little quieter.

“Not yet,” Clarice admits, “Has he been back here?”

“What?! No, no. Just get me out,” Catherine begs tearfully. “Please. The guy is fucking crazy…”

“Not until I know you’re safe,” Clarice apologises.

“Please get me out of here.”

“I will,” Clarice promises. “But I may have to leave you alone for a minute, ok?”

“No. Don’t go! Please! Don’t leave me here!”

“Quiet,” Clarice snaps, and it is harsh, she knows, but it is desperately important.

Or it had been, because a hand snaps out of the dark to grab a hold of her jacket and flings her back and away from the edge of the hole.

Clarice lands disorientated in the dark, her gun and phone knocked out of her hands. She scrabbles for the gun, even as she hears the sound of another gun cocking a mere metre away.

If she does not shoot now she will die.

She wants answers. So desperately. But whether she shoots or whether she does not get the gun in time, she will never hear them.

But then she remembers the tenacity of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, and realises she does not need answers from Buffalo Bill. She can see him.

She knows what he is. She knows why he does what he does. She knows him. She sees him.

And she truly does see him, as she grabs her gun and turns and the pair of them shoot at each other.

The bullet he fires at her misses her head by inches. The one she fires hits him in the chest.

He is a strong man, and it does not take him down. He staggers towards her, gun still raised. She goes to lift her own again when she hears another couple of shots. The one Bill fires at her misses again, because the one that Ardelia fires from the doorway hits Bill in the back. Clarice looks to Ardelia standing behind Bill, gun and flashlight in hand, breathing heavily.

But then Bill falls to his knees, and for a second, Clarice meets his eyes.

 _I cannot tell you._ Hannibal Lecter had said to her when she had begged him to help her find Buffalo Bill, hiding in the pages of a case file. _You have to see it for yourself._

 _Do you see?_ She hears Will Graham ask.

She does. She sees him.

She sees him now, she sees him clearly.

She also sees him die.

 _“Did you catch any bad guys today, Clarice?”_  She hears her father ask her. He sounds proud of her.

 _“I did today, angel,”_ Clarice thinks in return.

***

The publicity surrounding the tracking down and death of Buffalo Bill, and the rescue of Senator Martin’s daughter, is overwhelming for a good few weeks. It is shadowed slightly, by the reporters who remind the readers that the investigation had directly led to the escape of cannibal serial killers Dr Hannibal Lecter and ex-special agent Will Graham.

Maybe if they knew just how indebted the entire _Buffalo Bill Case_ was to the information supplied by Lecter and Graham…

But they are not allowed to talk about that.

It does not mean that she does not think of them. She may not have been assigned to the team to hunt them down again - a precaution Jack Crawford thinks will keep her safe - but she cannot help but think about them; puzzle over them, debate where they could be, what their next move is.

Lecter and Graham’s dog are still within the FBI facility they were placed in following Lecter’s escape. She does not know what that means, whether they are leaving them for the time being, or if it means that they are nearby, biding their time. She wonders whether they have found each other yet.

But tonight she cannot linger over such thoughts. They have officially closed the _Buffalo Bill Case_ , and in a rare occasion, the team that worked on the case are all out for celebratory drinks.

They do not mention Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, because that dampens the triumph. Honestly, it is just nice to have a night off, surrounded by colleagues, even if her mind is still preoccupied.

A lot has changed for her in the last few weeks. Her entire view of case work and the killers they pursue has changed; the way she sees. Since meeting Hannibal Lecter for the first time she has gotten into the minds of three serial killers, Lecter, Graham and Gumb, and they have in turn situated themselves in hers. She and Ardelia had been advised to have a session with a therapist to discuss what happened that day with Bill. They had gone, but Clarice had found herself answering carefully, considering every probing question for some other intention. She did not want to reveal too much about herself, in case she let something slip about Hannibal, about Will, about the lambs.

She is dating now, too. She had gone to the museum to thank Dan Roden and Dr Paula Pincher for their help in identifying the _Acherontia styx_ , and as she went to leave, Dan caught up with her. He had looked nervous, unassumingly attractive with his soft chestnut hair, his dark eyes and his slim frame. He had asked her out for drinks sometime. He had asked her courteously, his hands clasped in front of him the way she imagined that Hannibal Lecter might; polite and chivalrous. But when she had accepted, and he pushed his glasses up his nose and grinned widely in that way he doesn’t seem to realise is disarmingly handsome, it is not unlike the way Will Graham smiles. She had scolded herself for the comparisons, ashamed of herself, but by the second date she learns to push them aside and gives Dan her full attention.

She brings herself back to the present, laughs at Price and Zeller clowning around and Jack rolling his eyes. Ardelia leans over and makes a sarcastic comment and Clarice grins. Although she joins in with the bantering conversation for a little longer, she cannot stop her thoughts slipping elsewhere every now and again. Before this last case, Clarice has never had a problem with shutting off after the case is closed, but this one she cannot seem to let go of. Maybe it is because there are still loose ties. Maybe it is because Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are back on the run again, another puzzle and chase to take up, that her mind seems incapable of letting them go just yet. She hopes she will stop obsessing over time, but she knows that whatever she does, she will never be able to truly forget. She doesn’t know if she wants to.

She excuses herself to go and get another drink. She leans against the bar, fiddling with a cocktail menu as she waits to be served.

Someone taps her on the shoulder.

She turns around and blinks.

“Freddie?” she asks with surprise.

Freddie Lounds gives her a smile that wavers between sheepish and awkward. She is dressed fairly casually by her usual standards, in denim jeans and a turquoise sweater that compliments, rather than clashes with, the auburn of her curly hair.

The work drinks tonight had not been widely advertised, so Clarice wonders how the hell Freddie has even found them here.

Clarice is confused even further when Freddie holds over her own mobile phone; a device that Freddie is highly possessive of and hates to hand over when they find her lurking around crime scenes taking photographs and taking notes of things that she shouldn’t be.

“There’s a call for you,” Freddie says.

Clarice stares at the phone, bewildered, before frowning at Freddie.

“Just answer it,” Freddie says. “When you’re done I’ll be here at the bar. Having a very stiff drink.”

She pushes the phone into Clarice’s hand, and Clarice looks at her suspiciously a moment longer, before allowing her curiosity to get the better of her. Clarice turns on her heel and heads out of the building into the early evening of the street outside. She lifts the phone to her ear.

“Clarice Starling speaking.”

“Have the lambs stopped screaming?”

Clarice freezes, stares blankly down the street. “Dr Lecter?”

“Hello Clarice,” Hannibal Lecter says, and he sounds reasonably jovial. “Please do not bother running to Jack or trying to get a trace on the call, I won’t be around long enough for it to do anything of use.”

Clarice glances a little nervously up and down the street. “Where are you, Dr Lecter?”

“Are we no longer using forenames, Clarice?”

She wants to say that she never has used his forename, but that would be a lie. So instead she says, “Not now that you are a fugitive again.”

“That is a pity. Now that you no longer want something from me, I suppose. As to my whereabouts, I have no plans to call on you Clarice, I have decided that the world is more interesting with you in it. I would like to think that you would extend me the same courtesy, but I know you, now. It is unlikely you will give up the hunt.”

“I am no longer assigned to your case,” she says. She does not confirm whether or not that means she will give up the hunt or not. They both know that she won’t.

"Maybe that is just as well.”

“And what of Mr Graham?” Clarice asks, prying, “I can imagine he is less inclined to agree with you.”

“Will will leave you be. I will make sure he knows. He can make allowances for me, as I have done for him in the past.”

Clarice does not know whether to be flattered or concerned that Hannibal Lecter seems to hold her in high regard enough to want to keep her alive. She also picks up on the fact that Lecter is talking about Graham to her like he is not there, listening in.

“Is he not with you?” she asks. She had assumed that they would have found each other by now.

“Not yet,” Lecter says, “Soon.” There is a pause before Lecter continues. “The way that the arrangement stood I have not spoken to him since that night you managed to organise our meal together. I look forward to seeing him again.”

Clarice turns his choice of words over in her mind, and whilst at first she finds it thrilling to have such intelligent conversations again that she has to think over every phrase chosen, she suddenly realises what it is he wishes for her to pick up on.

“What arrangement?”

“Our arrangement for finding each other.”

She frowns, “When did you make this arrangement?”

“Hmm,” Lecter makes a purposefully thoughtful noise, like he has to think about it, when he most certainly does not. “About fifteen months ago.”

Clarice’s mind is whirring. Lecter and Graham had been locked up in the State Hospital for nearly thirteen months since their sentence, but they had been caught several weeks before that, and the trial had taken up the weeks between the capture and their sentence and incarceration. Although the trial had taken less time than usual, there had been a lot to cover, and it had to be done with care, what with the protests from the public calling for Lecter to be given the death penalty, in a state that had made it illegal. It would have to have been around fourteen months since Lecter and Graham were first found and captured in the house in Baltimore. Which means that about a month before that, if Lecter is to be believed, they had made an arrangement to find each other. That did not make sense.

“You had an arrangement on what would happen if you both managed to escape?”

“There is no ‘manage’ about it, Clarice. It was always inevitable. It was always the plan.”

Clarice chest and stomach feel hollow all of a sudden, “The plan?” she says, quietly disbelieving. “What plan?”

Lecter laughs again, light and a little mocking, “Oh, Clarice. You know, I was honestly quite insulted when you all assumed we would really be so foolish as to return to the old house.”

Clarice is so shocked that she almost drops the phone. She clutches it closer to her ear instead.

If what Lecter is saying is true, then Lecter and Graham went to the house with the intention of being caught by the FBI – she had always thought it had been an unusually clumsy move they had made – and with a plan to escape and find each other again. But that makes no sense to her, because why would they plan something like this? Why would they let themselves be caught? Why would they let themselves be separated and locked up for a whole year?

“But why?” she cannot help but ask.

“To help with the case, of course,” Lecter says, simply.

“The Buffalo Bill case,” Clarice realises on a breath. “But how?”

“I had the body of Benjamina Raspail in my storage facility, if you remember. I knew of him for years. I knew he would kill again, and once he had, I knew his taste for it would grow, and that he would continue to do so.”

“But the second person murdered of the skin-suit victims, Max Jenning, his was the first body found and that wasn’t until around the time that you were captured.”

“He was found three weeks before, actually, but was likely killed a few weeks before that. And the next body, I think you will find, was found the day before we allowed you to find us in the house.”

“Allowed us to?” Clarice takes the intended bait. “You mean you decided to be caught because you had realised the bodies turning up were the work of Buffalo Bill?”

“Precisely.”

“But that would mean that you were basing your assumptions that it was him after only two bodies turning up. That’s risky on such little evidence.”

“I think you will find that there are another couple of seemingly unrelated murders that came before the skin-suit victims that you can connect to Bill. Two bodies; one cut into bits but with large pieces of skin missing, and another completely skinned, found during the year prior in separate states. They were test subjects before he took the first person he had in mind for his suit. It was only when the first two skin-suit victims turned up that I knew for sure that a pattern was forming. I knew he would kill a few in quick succession, to see what he could do; Fiona Bimmel and the two men that followed, Max Jenning and Joseph Lowoski, before easing off, acting a little more carefully, considering a little more, picking more carefully, which is why the kidnapping of his next four victims were so spread out over the past twelve months. He picked, he observed. He did his research because of the storm the first three caused.”

Clarice thinks she knows the other two murders he means. There hadn’t been much consideration that they had been Buffalo Bill’s because Bill had a certain skinning style that just wasn’t present in the other two. But Clarice realises how once Benjamina Raspail’s body had been found in the storage unit and linked to Buffalo Bill despite being entirely different to his other murders, they should have looked into the possibility that there might be more seemingly unrelated cases.

“You knew him. You had seen who he was. You knew that he’d killed before,” she realises, “You knew how he would progress. So when the first couple of bodies of a similar style of death showed up, you knew he was finding a pattern, that he would continue, that he would come to our attention, gain himself a killer’s name, become our most wanted. So you and Mr Graham let yourselves be caught to help on the case?” It just sounded utterly absurd. “Is that what you are telling me?”

“That is exactly what I am telling you.”

“But there are so many factors to consider,” she gasps, for lack of anything else to say because she can scarcely believe it. “You did not know we would keep you and Mr Graham in the same facility, you did not know that we would end up asking for your help with the Buffalo Bill case at all.”

“I know Frederick Chilton and I know Jack Crawford,” Lecter says simply, “Chilton would want us both under his roof, Jack wouldn’t want us somewhere far away. So I knew we would not be separated immediately, and even if we had, we had an alternative plan in place. I also know that Jack would utilise Will’s geographical closeness in order to pick his brains over Buffalo Bill eventually. Knowing Bill like I did I knew he would be a frustrating case, and to be perfectly honest with you, Clarice, it was not so much about my being concerned that you would not come to us for help at all, but rather a little surprised that it took you so long to do so.”

“Are we really so predictable?”

“You? No. Jack and Frederick, I know them too well. I know you, now, however, and I am curious. Have those lambs stopped screaming?”

“For now,” Clarice whispers.

“For now. But not for forever?”

She honestly does not know. She does not let him know this. “Why are you telling me all this, Dr Lecter?”

“I admit, I usually find the villain’s explanatory monologue cliché, foolish and egotistical. But on this occasion, I wished to tell you that we always had complete control of our fates. Our lives were always our own. We had to adapt to a couple of unforeseen situations, yourself being a cause of several of them, but we still achieved what we set out to achieve. I therefore also wished to tell you because I am rather proud of our feat. And I want you to tell Jack and your colleagues what I have told you. I want Jack to know that he only caught us because we allowed him to. He will not be catching us again.”

Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham had always planned to escape. They had always known they would be free again. It was making her rethink, run over in her head, all the subtle, and not so subtle, hints that the pair of them had made over her meetings with them, and could not believe she had not seen it. So sure had they all been that Lecter and Graham were locked up for the rest of their lives, that they had been blind to see who had really been holding the keys the entire time.

But whether they had known this all along or not, did not explain why on earth they had even bothered to do it in the first place. What was there to gain from it?

“Why, Dr Lecter? Why did you let yourselves be captured? Why did you help with the Buffalo Bill case?”

All she can think of is that it is a play of power; that they were playing one of Lecter’s games, under the guise of being in a supposedly powerless position, whilst pushing around individual pieces before the payoff, when they became key players that held all the cards, and a way out.

“We thought it would be interesting, something new and testing and exciting. ‘To mix things up’, as Will phrased it. We decided it would be a new masterpiece we could create, a new story to weave. But I am closing this chapter, I am finding Will again, and we are starting the next. I would advise that you do not make yourself a part of it by chasing us, Clarice. Focus instead on your profession, and keeping those lambs quiet, and spreading your wings. Your eyes are open now, it will come to you easier. Do not come after us, or else we will find a way to fix you up with feathers and lambs with your dedicated heart removed. Consider this a warning, and make sure to heed it, Clarice, I do not make exceptions often.”

Clarice is rendered speechless for a long moment. It was about the power, about playing the game, but all of it had come about essentially because Lecter and Graham had been _bored_. It makes her realise once again, like an unwelcome punch to the gut, how sadistic these two men can be. They had set this whole thing up, just to toy with the pieces, play their little word games, just because they thought it would be _entertaining_.

And Clarice, Clarice has been one of those game pieces the whole time. And whilst she feels almost violated about having been so manipulated without her, or anybody else’s knowledge, she tries not to feel anything about the fact that Lecter had called her a cause of unforeseen situations, something that had surprised them and that they had had to add into their equations. She tries not to feel that thrill that they make her feel. She quashes it, because she is stronger than that. She has to be.

“And now I must bid you farewell, Clarice Starling.”

The sudden statement of departure surprises her. “Dr Lecter…”

“Goodbye, Clarice.”

“Hannibal?” she whispers into the phone, but the call has ended, and there is no answer.

Clarice is left standing in the street, the world blurring around her, but she is frozen in the centre of it. She slowly lowers the phone from her ear. There are people passing her on the street but she pays them no attention.

It is not until she sees movement above her head that she looks up at the neon sign of the bar and finally focuses on something.

There is a common moth fluttering, captivated by the bright lights that tempt it, even as it crashes repeatedly into the sign. She watches it for a while. She thinks of Buffalo Bill and his fascination with Death’s Head Hawkmoths and their stages of transformation. She wonders why the moth keeps making the same mistake, constantly beating itself against the frame of the sign in order to reach the bright lights out of its reach.

Maybe she is no different to that small moth with its papery wings, attempting to understand something too fascinating, too enticing, whilst it remains frustratingly out of reach, and once reached, could be fatal.

Hannibal Lecter says that she has spread her wings, but she knows now that she needs to keep flying in the right direction, and not back towards the danger that so thrills her.

She needs to be smarter than the likes of the stags and the wolves and the buffalos of the world that would attempt to trick and destroy and control. She decides this even as she turns back into the bar, preparing herself to tell Jack Crawford how they have been truly outsmarted.

She needs to keep being herself, she decides. She cannot be a moth, as she does not need to change into anything else; not like Will Graham did. She refuses to be tempted like he was. She will not give in like he did. She does not need to be ensnared in antlers. She needs to be stronger than that.

She is a starling. She needs to spread her wings, out of reach of those who would beckon her to descend, and keep aiming for those greater heights. Keep saving as many as she can. And maybe then the lambs will be silenced for good.

***

 

Three Weeks Later

 

 

Will Graham breathes in the smell of the forest and tells himself he is done with his time behind bars. Whilst the last year has proved itself a challenge, it has not been without its setbacks.

Being separated from Hannibal, being separated from their dogs, being locked up and unable to be free, Chilton’s mistreatment, the lack of nourishment.

He is almost unrecognisable now, but not just because he is a little thinner. His current disguise involves a crisp striped white shirt, designer jeans and sunglasses, a brown leather jacket slung over his shoulder, hair fashionably shaved at the sides and curled on the top, dyed a honeyed blonde, face clean shaven. No-one will be looking for a Will Graham that looks like he has just confidently stepped from the pages of a magazine, rather than the feral wild-man the media have him made out to be.

Will hates being dressed like this, despite getting used to Hannibal dressing him in fineries over the last six years. This current disguise is more extreme than his usual, but certainly necessary. He can scarcely believe it, but this is the disguise that allowed him to stay in Maryland long enough to be able to steal back the dogs on the night that Jack Crawford and Clarice Starling and all the others were out celebrating the closing of the _Buffalo Bill Case_. And he knows he has to keep this disguise up until he meets Hannibal and they can be themselves again, move to another continent.

He does not have to wait much longer. He looks ridiculously dressed up for a wander around the woods, but no-one is going to see him here, no-one but Hannibal, because he is minutes away from seeing him again for the first time since Clarice Starling organised the meeting for them in the State Hospital before Hannibal had been taken to Memphis, where he had escaped. Will's stomach flutters with anticipation, with excitement.

How things have changed since the days when Hannibal made him confused and afraid and intimidated. Now all he can feel is love and desire and the growing happiness in knowing how close they must be now.

He travels towards their chosen meeting place on foot, having left the motorbike he travelled here on hidden in the trees a kilometre away. Hannibal had taught him to ride in remote areas across Europe, the pair of them dressed in leathers, the roar of the bike, the snug fit of the helmet, and the wind on his face when he did not wear one.

He closes his eyes and feels the breeze hit him now, lets it play between his fingers, delicate, weightless, like feathers or wings. He can almost hear them beating. He can hear birds singing. If he listens hard enough he can almost hear his feathered stag walking proudly through the trees.

He hears a twig snap.

Will whirls around, watchful and tense, staring into the trees that had been on his right. He crouches low, wary but controlled, and it probably looks strange, a man looking clean-cut like he currently does, holding himself like a defensive animal, but, as it appears, there is nobody there to see it. He waits, he watches, but after an extensive time, he decides it is safe to continue on.

He walks the rest of the way to the place they had agreed all those months ago to meet at. He has the co-ordinates, and staked out the area days ago. He knows where he needs to be, and he is on time, to the very second.

Which is why he is surprised that Hannibal, even more a stickler for promptness, is not there when he arrives.

He looks around the little clearing, with the antler carved into the tree in the centre, but he cannot see anything but trees and green and bark and soil. He cannot smell nor hear anything that is not a part of the forest.

He cannot help but feel the disappointment.

A moment before something crashes into him from behind.

He is twisted as he falls, so he hits the floor on his back, breath knocked out of him. But he does not care, because it is Hannibal Lecter that is grinning down at him.

“Your instincts have been forced idle.”

“You sure?” Will asks, smug and challenging, tapping the penknife he has held against Hannibal’s thigh.

Hannibal smiles, catches Will’s hand before he can stop him and pins his hands either side of his head, the penknife drops to the ground.

“And now?”

Will raises his chin, smirks, “Maybe I wanted to get caught. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Hannibal laughs, deep and cocky, a wide grin on his face as he lowers himself down to kiss him.

It’s like tasting the first sip of fresh water after days of drought. But this is Hannibal, and Will has been without him properly for months and months, so it tastes all the sweeter. He drinks him in, pushes up to meet him because Hannibal still has his hands pinned. Hannibal always kisses him with such devotion, Will is reminded of it now, as Will parts his lips, meets Hannibal’s tongue, allows himself to drown in it, be swept up in it.

Hannibal groans softly against his mouth and teases his bottom lip with sharp teeth. Will smiles.

Finally, Hannibal lets go of Will’s wrists, and Will snatches out and up at him, pulling him down more firmly on top of him, and Hannibal presses him harder into the dry dirt. Will feels one of Hannibal’s hands come to rest lightly over Will’s neck, the other dragging down his side, over his ribs.

“You are too thin, Will,” Hannibal breaths over him as they part.

Will shrugs, says “Chilton enjoyed having me there, I enjoyed testing him,” by way of explanation.

“I will feed you back up again,” Hannibal promises.

“I have no doubt about that.”

Hannibal climbs off him, holds out a hand to pull Will to his feet.

Will brushes himself off once he is upright, glancing up to see Hannibal smirking at his behaviour; Will Graham of six years ago would not worry about dirt on designer clothing.

“What?” Will counters faux-defensively, “I have a façade to maintain.”

“And what a façade to have chosen,” Hannibal stoops to collect Will’s discarded leather jacket and steps forward, draping it around his shoulders. “It is different to anything else you have done.”

“You look different too,” Will observes.

He gives Hannibal another onceover; Hannibal's hair is cut short, no strands falling over his forehead, but still it looks ruffled and spiked. It is darker than his natural blonde colour and there is several weeks’ worth of stubble framing his face. He is wearing something very un-Lecter like; a pair of faded jeans, a dark t-shirt, black leather jacket, biker boots. Hannibal has had many looks over their years together, to help keep their identities hidden. He has had hair long enough to ponytail, hair shaved to the scalp. Will has had these things too, but Hannibal seems to be able to make any style work for him, make it look effortless and dashing.

But whether they suit their current looks or not, Will is looking forward to shedding these disguises, in order to be themselves again.

“You look utterly ravishing,” Hannibal tells him, and he is looking at Will so hungrily that Will’s breath catches in a way it only ever seems to do in Hannibal’s presence.

Will pulls Hannibal back in towards him, “I have missed you,” Will tells him, looking into maroon eyes, their faces mere inches apart.

“And I have missed you,” Hannibal tells him, “So very much.”

Will buries his head in Hannibal’s neck, breaths him in, and Hannibal holds him, and it is not unlike how they held each other on that cliff top over six years ago. Except this time, Will is not going to throw them over.

He has already fallen. He knows it was worth it.

“I saw on TattleCrime that you got the dogs back,” Hannibal comments, “Where are they?”

“I have been at the safe house a couple of days already,” Will tells him. “I left them there. They will be so happy to see you. They have barely left my side.”

Sam, a mongrel with long brown fur and big soft eyes who Will had missed every single day, has not allowed Will out of his sight. Will is glad of it. Bev, their part-Weimaraner, elegant silver and blue-eyed, has always been a little more Hannibal’s dog than Will’s, but has also not left his side, and has taken to resting her head on Will’s knee on an evening so that he can pet her.

“Who took care of them whilst we were away?”

“Zeller,” Will tells him. “He took good care of them.”

“You were in Baltimore for some time before you got them back. Did you pay a visit to anyone?”

“I certainly did not, if you are implying something about Zeller," Will protests, "He took great care of the dogs and he and Price were always…”

“Not them,” Hannibal cuts him off, “I was meaning Chilton.” Hannibal’s expression has darkened significantly. “Did you see him?”

Will pauses, purses his lips, shakes his head stubbornly.

Hannibal looks disappointed, “Why not?”

“He’s been in hiding,” Will says, “Getting to him would have blown my cover and I would never have gotten the dogs back. I considered going, but just to scare him.”

“You wouldn’t have killed him?” Hannibal’s eyebrow quirks in question.

“No,” Will says. “I decided to let him live.”

“Then you are a more forgiving man than I,” Hannibal says curtly.

“I haven’t forgiven him for his treatment, Hannibal. He neglected me, taunted me, he had me beaten by the staff. I knew we were escaping, which kept me strong, but I had to endure him in the meantime. If I had not known, I think he could have broken me over time. I assume he tortured you too in his own way.”

Hannibal nods affirmative. “He caused me great irritation.”

“Well, that was his chance at payback, for us setting him up and getting him wobbling on the brink of life and death so many times. Putting him through all that grief.”

“He deserved a lot of that grief.”

“Yes he did,” Will argues, “But I decided not to kill him. We have made a fool of him and ruined him once again, and now you have released all that information to Freddie Lounds – you did decide to do that in the end didn’t you?”

Hannibal nods.

“Then everyone will know that we fooled Chilton and the FBI once again. His interference with the case and taking you to Memphis to meet Senator Martin will have ruined his career a second time over. I was happy to leave him and let him suffer the humiliation. Keep him scared that we will be coming for him."

Hannibal hums, does not seem convinced.

“If you have told Lounds, does that mean that you did call Jack like you intended to do?” Will asks, curious to hear what exactly Hannibal had revealed about their plot.

“I spoke to Clarice.”

Will blinks. “Clarice,” he repeats. He knows that Hannibal would never look at anyone else, but for some reason, he still feels a little petty about Starling.

“Yes. I decided that, unlike Jack, she would listen.”

“You were impressed by her.”

“Well weren’t you?” Hannibal asks knowingly.

“She was entertaining,” Will admits, “But you found her remarkable.”

Hannibal smiles, manoeuvring Will until Hannibal is pressed up against his back, his head dropping to mouth Will’s neck, and Will tilts his head back, forgiving, as Hannibal’s hands slide around to hold him around the stomach, hand resting over the scar he left there all those years ago.

“Not as you are,” Hannibal tells him. Will feels Hannibal smile against his skin, “There is nobody quite like you, Will.”

Will turns his head, presses his lips briefly to Hannibal’s hair, thinks that there is no being on earth quite like Hannibal Lecter.

“We should not part again, Will. As you said that night over our steak dinner, separation is not favourable.”

Will remembers that night, when Hannibal had bartered an evening with Will in exchange for giving Clarice information. He remembers that the steak had been terrible, but had tasted much better when fed to him by Hannibal. He remembers their conversation, layered with second meanings for the ears of those listening in and watching on camera. He remembers how he had laughed when Hannibal had broken the orderlies’ fingers. He remembers the look on Clarice’s face when he next saw her.

“It has been a good test,” Will admits, “And now we have had the payoff, I enjoyed the puzzle when it came to it.” That much was true, Hannibal had not actually told Will all that much about Buffalo Bill before they had gotten themselves arrested, as he had wanted to see Will work it out for himself. He had not even told Will about factors such as the body of Benjamina Raspail that he had had locked up in his storage unit, knowing Will would come to those conclusions himself. “But there was a lot of waiting in between, and in the waiting I got a little lost in my head, and spent more time there in the rooms of my mind with you than I did in the reality.”

“The game was played, and we won as we set out to, despite the surprises along the way. We adapted. We succeeded,” Hannibal says. “And yes, whilst it was something entirely different and challenging, as we had hoped, I do not think we will need to play such a game again.”

“I had not realised how much I had started to enjoy playing in a team.”

“Neither had I,” Hannibal tells him, voice low and soothing and so very welcome after so long without, in Will’s ear. “But I have my partner back, now.”

“You do,” Will promises, turning in Hannibal’s arms to kiss him one more time. “Let’s go home?”

Hannibal squeezes his arms a little tighter around Will in confirmation. “How did you get here?”

“Bike,” Will points back the way he came, “A kilometre that way. You?”

Hannibal gestures in the opposite direction, “Bike, six kilometres.” He sees Will’s eyebrow twitch. “I have been enjoying the freedom and fresh air,” Hannibal admits, “I wanted the walk.”

“Did you abandon the bike?” Will asks, “Or do you want to bring it to the house?”

“We will take both.”

Will nods, “Do you want a lift back to yours?”

“Certainly,” Hannibal takes his hand, “I am not planning to be separated from you again for at least a week.”

“Such flattery from a renowned lone wolf.”

“I have not been a lone wolf in well over six years, Will,” Hannibal reminds him as they start to walk, “And I am not the wolf of this relationship.”

Will rolls his eyes, but does not argue. He knows them both, he knows their traits by now. The Wendigo with stag’s antlers. The Wendigo and the Wolf.

They walk in companionable silence for a little while, enjoying the companionship, the presence of the other, both mental and physical, after so long without.

They have come a long way to get here, to this moment, but now they have made it, their latest stage completed and played out. The journey of theirs that began so long ago has ultimately been worth it in many ways, even if there was struggle and pain and turmoil in order to get there. There is much further to go, new pastures to explore. Before Hannibal, Will walked this life alone, but he does not walk it alone anymore.

“But she did have an interesting mind,” Hannibal comments after a while, prying, a little intrigued, and Will does not need to ask who it is he is talking about. “And in a matter of a few days I saw her flourish. I am sure you saw it too?”

“She spread her wings,” Will allows. It is true, he saw Clarice, the little bird, so timid and caged within the practice of right and wrong, spread her wings and take flight and learn to see from a different perspective. She became bolder, smarter, but not smart enough. They were outwitting them all the whole time. She may have taken flight, but the Wendigo’s antlers were ready to ensnare and entangle her, and the wolf waited on the ground, ready to swallow all of her feelings and fears. “I admit she is impressive. No wonder Jack likes her so much. I was wrong about her. I saw her as a lamb to the slaughter, but she is made of stronger bones than that.”

Hannibal made an inquisitive sound, “She told you about the lambs?” He seems surprised.

Will frowns. “It’s just a figure of speech.” He had used it before with Clarice too, and only now remembers the look of surprised shock flit across her face. “What lambs?”

“It does not matter,” Hannibal dismisses. “They have been silenced.”

“For now,” Will says automatically. He does not quite know why he says it, but it is the first thing on his tongue.

He sees Hannibal glance at him in surprise, before his gaze turns fond, devotedly impressed.

“Yes, for now,” Hannibal agrees.

“We will leave her be, I suppose?” Will presumes, “Let her join in on the chase?”

Hannibal nods, “I doubt we will go back to Baltimore again.”

“And if she leaves Baltimore?”

“Then she is stretching her wings, and I think we should let her fly. If she ever flutters too close, we will then see about clipping those wings.”

Will locates his bike. He brought an extra helmet in case, and so he passes one to Hannibal and fits the other over his head; concealing his face from anyone who might recognise him. Will lifts his face shield. “Do you want to do the honours?”

Hannibal grins, putting on his own helmet, before swinging his leg over the bike and waiting for Will to climb on behind him.

Will takes a hold of Hannibal’s waist, “So what next?” Will asks him. He is wondering what Hannibal has planned, whether they will hide out at the safe house for a while, whether they will move on, whether they will stay in the USA or travel down to the south, or sail overseas once more. The world is theirs, if they want it to be, because they are unlike anyone else, and they can do things that nobody will ever expect.

“We will work on instinct,” Hannibal tells him. Starts the bike, revs the engine.

Yes, Will supposes they will.

He holds on tight, letting Hannibal take him on a ride, as it has been since the very beginning. Once they hit the open road, it is fast, exhilarating, a winding journey with the forest on one side and open land on the other. It is freedom, and it has been sorely missed. It is Hannibal and he has been missed more. Will holds a little tighter.

He sees something moving in the trees, and turns his head to look. It looks like his old phantom, an old friend, now, the feathered stag. The antlers of a stag and the feathers of a raven. Feathers like a starling.

The Wendigo and the Wolf ride away, ride away from imprisonment, from Jack Crawford, the Buffalo that they had helped to catch, away from the Starling and the Stag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we have finally made it to the end, both of The Starling and The Stag, and the Mentor Tormentor series.
> 
> To those who have been so patient to wait for each update of this fic, thank you so much for it. I hope the last chapter was worth waiting for. For those who have been following the Mentor Tormentor series, thank you for coming on this post-s3 journey with me. Thanks to everyone who has left kudos, comments and bookmarks. I really really appreciate it.
> 
> Now all there is to do for me is keep my fingers crossed that those rumoured beginnings of discussion over Season 4 are true, and that we will get Murder Husbands galore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Comments and kudos are very very much loved and appreciated as always!
> 
> Check out this amazing [**"The Starling and The Stag" Cover art**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11996826) by marlahanni!


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